The CRU graph. Note that it
is calibrated in tenths of a degree Celsius and that even that tiny
amount of warming started long before the late 20th century. The
horizontal line is totally arbitrary, just a visual trick. The whole
graph would be a horizontal line if it were calibrated in whole degrees
-- thus showing ZERO warming

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in
many people that causes them to delight in going without material
comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people --
with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many
Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct
too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they
have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an
ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us
all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The blogspot version of this blog is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Dissecting Leftism. For a list of backups viewable at times when the main blog is "down", see here. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing) See here or here for the archives of this site
****************************************************************************************

31 March, 2016

Arctic news

Sea ice was down a bit for most of March but it has now popped back up
to a level similar to that in other recent years. The graph tells
all:

2016 is the black line

How awful for the Warmists. The Arctic is all they've got. I
imagine they will console themselves by saying today is the 15th lowest
or some such. You have to be creative with the truth to be a
Warmist -- which mostly means taking refuge in trivialities

"Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said
that the sea ice cover attained an average maximum extent of 14.52m sq
km (5.607m sq miles) on 24 March, the lowest winter maximum since
records began in 1979. The low beats a record set only last year of
14.54m sq km (5.612m sq miles), reached on 25 February 2015".

As we all know, Warmists have seized on the slight warming in 2015 as
"proving" Warmism to be right. El Nino is ignored. So the year
2011 must have been hard for them. I downloaded the 2011 chart
from CRU in 2012. It is below. That was only the 12th
Warmest year on record. So did such a dismal figure shake their
faith in Warmism at all? No way! They went on proclaiming
their twisted gospel as before

Why renewable energy is a worse option than nuclear

Comment from South Africa

THERE is a strange belief in the new green religion that "renewable"
always means "good". It doesn’t. Slave labour is a form of renewable
energy but is far from good. Wood is renewable but the burning of trees
for firewood is causing environmental calamity in Africa. Solar and wind
energy are both excellent for many applications such as solar
water-heating, windmills on Karoo farms and the provision of small
amounts of electricity in remote households, clinics and schools. But
they are bad for generating grid electricity — bad for the environment
and bad for the economy.

The Western Cape provides a good demonstration of energy realities.
About 30km north of Cape Town is Koeberg Nuclear Power Station; a
further 30km north is the Darling Wind Farm. A comparison of the two is
instructive.

Koeberg consists of two units of 900MW capacity each. It was built in
nine years, which included a long delay for sabotage, and completed in
1985. Its average electricity production is about 12,600 gigawatt hours
(GWh) a year.

The Darling Wind Farm consists of four wind turbines of 1.3MW capacity
each. It was built in eight months and completed in 2008. According to
its website, it is estimated to produce 8.6GWh a year. Wind farms
typically produce less electricity than predicted, but let us accept
this figure.

The "load factor" or "capacity factor" of a power plant tells what the
plant actually generates compared with its capacity. If it has a
capacity to generate 100MW but over a period of time actually produces
an average of 70MW, its load factor is 70%.

On these figures, Koeberg has a load factor of 80%. This is not bad but
it is by no means the best for nuclear stations. In the US, the load
factor for nuclear power is 90%. The Darling Wind Farm has a load factor
of 18.9%. This is pretty good for wind. In Germany, Europe’s biggest
generator of wind power, the load factor is 17%.

It would require 5,860 Darling wind turbines to generate the same amount
of electricity as Koeberg. Imagine 5,860 of these huge machines, each
81m high, compared with Koeberg’s two reactor buildings, each 57m high.
Imagine the thousands of kilometres of transmission lines. Imagine the
colossal, wasteful, inefficient use of the earth’s resources (wind
requires 10 times more concrete and steel than nuclear per kilowatt
hour, or kWh).

Wind turbines elsewhere are even bigger than Darling’s, looming over
local landscapes like Goliaths. "Gigantic is beautiful!" could be the
slogan of wind power.

If these 5,860 wind turbines were built at the same rate as the Darling
Wind Farm, it would take 970 years. If they were built in the same time
as Koeberg, it would mean building more than 12 wind turbines every week
for nine years. It is a fallacy that wind turbines can be built more
quickly than nuclear power plants.

But this does not tell half of wind’s problems. With nuclear (or coal or
gas), the electricity is generated when you want it for as long as you
want it. It is reliable and predictable. With wind, the electricity is
produced only if the wind happens to be blowing at the right strength,
which is seldom and unpredictable. Because of this, one kWh of wind
electricity has far less value than one kWh of nuclear electricity, if
indeed it has any value at all. (In 2008, our gold mines shut down
because Eskom could not guarantee electricity supply. Unreliable
electricity was worthless to them.)

Wind for grid electricity depends completely on governments. Because it
is so expensive and unreliable, nobody will put a single cent into it
unless the government forces taxpayers or consumers to pay huge
operating subsidies for it. Governments compel utilities to buy wind
electricity at very high prices, whether they want it or not, whenever
the wind happens to be blowing. With nuclear, coal and gas, the
generator serves the customer. With wind, the customer serves the
generator.

The UK has more than 3,000 wind turbines with a capacity of more than
5,000MW. Because of its latitude, the UK has relatively good wind
conditions. But a study by the John Muir Trust (which looked only at the
records of electricity production) showed that on 124 occasions from
November 2008 to December 2010, the total generation of wind power was
less than 20MW. The load factor over these periods was less than 0.4%.

This exposes another fallacy of wind power, that "the wind is always
blowing somewhere". In recent cold winters in northern Europe, when
electricity was desperately demanded, the wind turbines from Ireland to
Germany were producing next to nothing.

If you look at any graph of a nation’s electricity demand, you will see a
fairly predictable curve that peaks at breakfast and supper time on
weekdays and dips on weekends and at night. The difference between
minimum and maximum demand is about two to one. Now look at a graph of
wind electricity production. It shows violent, unpredictable
fluctuations. The difference between minimum and maximum production is
hundreds to one or more.

Nuclear power has by far the best safety record of any energy technology, much better than wind.

The Fukushima nuclear accident last year provided a spectacular
demonstration of nuclear safety. A monstrous earthquake and tsunami,
which killed 25,000 people, hit old-fashioned Japanese nuclear plants
run by a negligent and corrupt utility; four were severely damaged and
thousands of people were evacuated, yet the radiation from the accident
has killed nobody and is unlikely to do so.

Meanwhile, in recent years, thousands of people have been killed in accidents in coal, gas, hydro, oil and wind.

Because of the vast amounts of uranium and thorium on earth, nuclear
power is sustainable for the remaining life of the planet. Nuclear
waste, tiny in volume, solid and stable, is easy to store so that it
presents no danger to people or the environment.

The waste from wind includes the toxic, long-lived wastes from the
mining of neodymium, used in wind generators, which are causing death
and disease in Chinese mining communities. (It is literally true that
every single energy technology, including wind and solar, produces
"deadly waste that lasts for thousands of millions of years" but with
proper care we know how to deal with it from generation to generation.
Nuclear waste presents nothing new, including plutonium and fission
products.)

Solar energy, especially in sunny South Africa, seems better than wind
but, for grid electricity, it is even more expensive and with even lower
load factors.

Nuclear versus renewable energy boils down to this simple question: do you want to work with nature or against it?

Nature has made nuclear energy highly concentrated and reliable,
allowing us to generate large amounts of electricity from small amounts
of materials, very economically and with the least disruption to the
environment. Nature has made wind and solar power diluted and
unreliable.

It would be stupid to build a nuclear reactor plant in your attic to
heat your water; solar power is far better. Similarly it is stupid to
use solar or wind for grid electricity; nuclear is far better.

If past predictions are any indication, enough ice should have melted by
now as a result of anthropogenic global warming to threaten the
existence of polar bears. That’s not to say Arctic sea ice is doing
exceedingly well or even that it’s near average. For the record, ice
extent appears to have registered a new record low this winter, though
any alarm is dampened by the fact El Niño and an overall warm Pacific
ocean contributed to more heat across the globe, and likely
significantly so. On the flip side, it’s true also that the Arctic has
not experienced the death spiral that was predicted by so many. That
goes for both ice and polar bears. A new study conducted by scientists
at Lakehead University in Canada should help alleviate any concerns we
might have that polar bears are nearing extinction.

The authors write, “[W]e suggest that the current status of Canadian
polar bear subpopulations in 2013 was 12 stable/increasing and one
declining (Kane Basin). We do not find support for the perspective that
polar bears within or shared with Canada are currently in any sort of
climate crisis.” They continue: “We show that much of the scientific
evidence indicating that some polar bear subpopulations are declining
due to climate change-mediated sea ice reductions is likely flawed by
poor mark–recapture (M-R) sampling and that the complex analysis models
employed to overcome these capture issues apparently fail to provide
accurate estimates of the demographic parameters used to determine
subpopulation status.”

These findings are more or less in line with other studies, including
one by Dr. Susan Crockford of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Last
year she wrote, “On almost every measure, things are looking good for
polar bears. Scientists are finding that they are well distributed
throughout their range and adapting well to changes in sea ice. Health
indicators are good and they are benefiting from abundant prey.”
Moreover, other estimates show that the polar bear population has
increased significantly over the years and now sits in the tens of
thousands, perhaps as high as 30,000.

Paradoxically, alarmists may be looking at the situation totally
backwards — and again we turn to Crockford for explanation. As The Daily
Caller’s Michael Bastasch writes, “Shrinking Arctic sea ice may not be
the real threat to polar bears. Veteran zoologist Susan Crockford argues
that thick spring ice is a bigger problem for polar bears than sparse
summer ice.” Crockford says, “Thick spring ice near shore drives seals
to give birth elsewhere because they cannot maintain their breathing
holes in the ice. This leaves mothers emerging from onshore dens with
newborn cubs with nothing to eat at a time when they desperately need
food: cubs die quickly, mothers more slowly.”

We conclude by noting the Lakehead University researchers aren’t what we
would label climate “deniers.” In the report, they write, “We see
reason for concern, but find no reliable evidence to support the
contention that polar bears are currently experiencing a climate crisis.
We suggest that the qualitative projections for dramatic reductions in
population numbers and range are overly pessimistic given the response
of polar bears, climate, and sea ice to the present.” In other words,
they’re demonstrating an objective approach to the scientific evidence.
And that’s something the entire climate community should emulate.

A recent report from the Daily Caller highlights how the Environmental
Protection Agency frequently uses private email accounts to communicate
with environmental lobbyists, ducking the transparency and
record-keeping requirements that are supposed to bind the agency.

“Joe," the email begins, "Would you please send this email to Gina for
me? I would have sent it to her directly with a cc to you but I don’t
have a private email address for her and would prefer to not use an
office email address,” Following that introduction is a message
outlining specific concerns about a pending regulation, and how it would
impact the author's clients.

Upon seeing the report, Executive Director of FreedomWorks Foundation
Curt Levey, who heads the organization’s regulatory reform project,
commented: "Under the best circumstances, the growth of the regulatory
state is a threat to the constitutional limits on the power of the
federal government. The cronyism and contempt for accountability at
these executive branch agencies only makes the problem worse. Not only
are the regulatory agencies run by unelected bureaucrats, with no
incentive to do right by the American people, but they continue to act
in ways that indicate that they think they are above the law."

While the private email server used by Hillary Clinton when she served
as Secretary of State may be the most outrageous example, it appears
that this type of behavior is far from an anomaly in Washington.
Transparency guidelines exist for a good reason; government is uniquely
positioned to impose burdens on businesses and individuals, and enforce
them with any legal means necessary. Such power is dangerous if
unchecked, and so the American people have a right to know what
regulators at the EPA are up to. By using private email accounts, the
agency robs the public of that ability.

Private communications with lobbyists indicate a desire to cut deals or
trade favors far away from the watchful eyes of the citizenry, a
motivation that can't be good for freedom of any kind. The EPA is doing
this in more than a few cases, and who knows what other federal agencies
are doing the same or worse. So long as government bureaucrats
sufficiently cover their tracks, even FOIA requests are unlikely to
uncover the truth.

Al this underscores the need for restoring the separation of powers
originally intended by America's Founding Fathers and enshrined in the
Constitution – that is, Congress makes the laws and the executive branch
executes them. Federal bureaucrats, who have little accountability to
voters in the best case and even less when they evade transparency
requirements, must be prevented from writing de facto laws under the
guise of interpreting legislation.

DENMARK, WI - Brown County appears to be digging a deeper and deeper
hole for itself as more facts come to light surrounding Duke Energy’s
Shirley Windpower. After an unusually long almost 3 month delay in
satisfying a resident’s open records request, the records ultimately
provided expose that former Brown County Health Officer Chua Xiong feels
ill when visiting the Shirley Wind facility. In an email to her intern
Carolyn Harvey she states:

“Carolyn the times I have been out there by the Wind Turbines, l get
such migraine headaches. I think I should take some preventative Tylenol
before I head out there.”

Despite this admission, approximately one month later Ms. Xiong went on
to make her declaration that “Currently there is insufficient scientific
evidence-based research to support the relationship between wind
turbines and health concerns.” She then went further in saying that this
was her “final decision” and that she would only monitor the situation
“on an annual basis”. In this decision she completely ignored the real
world health impact of Duke Energy’s wind turbines on Brown County
families as evidenced through their sworn affidavits and their
documentation of past and continued suffering, not to mention her own
repeated migraines when in proximity to Duke’s turbines.

So what has happened between Ms. Xiong’s declaration and the March 18th
release of the open records showing that Brown County’s Health Officer
Chua Xiong suffers migraines when she is by the Shirley Wind turbines?
On March 4th, Ms. Xiong submitted her resignation to County Executive
Troy Streckenbach. He did not share this with County department heads
until just two days prior to March 18th, Ms. Xiong’s last day. This date
also coincides with Executive Streckenbach’s announcement of Brown
County Corporation Counsel Juliana Ruenzel’s resignation.

Ms. Ruenzel served as head legal counsel who participated in all closed
sessions meetings regarding Shirley Wind, and was in charge of reviewing
open records requests. The facts of her resignation have not been
disclosed. According to sources, Ruenzel opted to not state why the
sudden departure.

It is high time that Brown County and its Health Director follow the
lead of its own Board of Health who unanimously declared Duke’s wind
turbines in Glenmore a “Human Health Hazard”. They need to recognize
that residents are sick, homes have been abandoned, that outsiders (even
the County’s own Health Director) feel ill while in the project area,
and FINALLY do whatever is necessary to protect the health and safety of
southern Brown County residents. Brown County does not need Shirley
Wind to become its Flint, Michigan. Until the County does the right
thing and takes action, families will continue to suffer, the County’s
inaction will escalate their legal liability, and this issue will not go
away.

What bulldust! For a start, coral bleaching is NOT coral
death. It is a stress response that leads to the expulsion of
symbiotic algae. There are about half a dozen things that can
cause it. And the ONE thing that can be excluded as a cause is
anthropogenic global warming. Why? Because there has been
none of that for nearly 19 years. Things that don't exist don't
cause anything.

The ocean waters MAY have warmed but that
will be due to natural factors such as El Nino. The 2015 and early
2016 temperature upticks were DEMONSTRABLY due to El Nino and other
natural factors, as CO2 levels were plateaued at the relevant time.

And
it is not at all certain that a small temperature rise causes
bleaching. An ancient coral reef specimen now on display at the
Natural History Museum in London is instructive. It goes back
to 160 million years ago. The exhibit is proof that
ancestors of modern corals somehow thrived during the Late Jurassic
period when temperatures were warmer and atmospheric levels of carbon
dioxide higher than they are today.

And if that's ancient
history, how come corals survive in the Persian Gulf today at
temperatures up to 8 degrees hotter that what we see in the tropical
Pacific?

Bleaching may even be a positive thing. In recent years,
scientists have discovered that some corals resist bleaching by hosting
types of algae that can handle the heat, while others swap out the
heat-stressed algae for tougher, heat-resistant strains.

All
the points I have made above could have been made by any competent
marine biologist -- and I can provide references for them
all. But I am not a marine biologist. I am a
psychologist. What a harrowed world we live in where a
psychologist has to give the basic information that marine biologists
dare not give.

An aerial survey of the northern Great Barrier Reef has shown that 95
per cent of the reefs are now severely bleached — far worse than
previously thought.

Professor Terry Hughes, a coral reef expert based at James Cook
University in Townsville who led the survey team, said the situation is
now critical.

"We're seeing huge levels of bleaching in the northern thousand-kilometre stretch of the Great Barrier Reef."

Of the 520 reefs he surveyed, only four showed no evidence of
bleaching. From Cairns to the Torres Strait, the once colourful
ribbons of reef are a ghostly white.

"It's too early to tell precisely how many of the bleached coral will
die, but judging from the extreme level even the most robust corals are
snow white, I'd expect to see about half of those corals die in the
coming month or so," Professor Hughes said.

This is the third global coral bleaching since 1998, and scientists have
found no evidence of these disasters before the late 20th century.

"We have coral cores that provide 400 years of annual growth," explains
Dr Neal Cantin from the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

"We don't see the signatures of bleaching in reduced growth following a bleaching event until the recent 1998/2000 events."

Environment Minister Greg Hunt flew over the reef just eight days ago,
before Professor Hughes' aerial survey, and announced some additional
resources for monitoring the reef.

"There's good and bad news — the bottom three quarters of the reef is in strong condition," he said at the time.

"[But] as we head north of Lizard Island it becomes increasingly prone to bleaching."

The northern part of the Great Barrier Reef is the most pristine part of
the marine park — and that is one possible glimmer of hope.

"On the bright side, it's more likely that these pristine reefs in the
northern section will be better able to bounce back afterwards,"
Professor Hughes said.

"Nonetheless we're looking at 10-year recovery period, so this is a very severe blow."

Professor Justin Marshall, a reef scientist from the University of
Queensland, said the reason for these bleaching events was clear.

"What we're seeing now is unequivocally to do with climate change," he told 7.30.

"The world has agreed, this is climate change, we're seeing climate change play out across our reefs."

Professor Hughes said he is frustrated about the whole climate change debate.

"The government has not been listening to us for the past 20 years," he said.

"It has been inevitable that this bleaching event would happen, and now it has.

"We need to join the global community in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

Arrant nonsense. Arctic temperatures increased FAR more than
global temperatures. So this is a local effect, not a global
one. It is Arctic-specific with no demonstrable relevance to CO2
emissions or the alleged effects of CO2 emissions. Since CO2 emissions
were in fact flat overall in 2015 and into 2016, it is DEMONSTRABLE that
they did not cause the Arctic warming. Non-change doesn't cause
change. The warming could have been caused by oscillations in
ocean currents, oscillations in air currents or subsurface
vulcanism. Nobody knows

The growth of Arctic sea ice this winter peaked reached another milestone.

It recorded the lowest maximum level of ice on record, thanks to extraordinarily warm temperatures.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center says ice covered a maximum of 5.607 million square miles of the Arctic Ocean in 2016.

That's 5,000 square miles less than the old record set in 2015 — a
difference slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut.

It's also some 431,000 miles less than the 30-year average. That difference is the size of Texas and California combined.

Records go back to 1979 when satellites started measuring sea ice, which forms when Arctic Ocean water freezes.

This year's ice didn't break the record by much, but it's 'an
exclamation point' on a longer-term trend, said Nasa scientist Walt
Meier, who helped calculate the data.

The sub-par showing doesn't necessarily mean that the minimum extent this summer will also break a record, scientists said.

The summer minimum is more important for affecting Earth's climate and weather.

Data center
scientist Julienne Stroeve says winter temperatures over the North Pole
were 16 degrees warmer than normal, while other parts of the Arctic ran 4
to 11 degrees warmer than normal.

Data center chief Mark Serreze said: 'I have never seen such a warm,
crazy winter in the Arctic.' 'It was so warm that the Barents Sea was
'pretty much close to ice -free for almost the whole winter, which is
very unusual,' Meier said. Stroeve said early indications show that the
sea ice is thinner than last year.

A leading but still controversial theory says loss of sea ice in the
Arctic may change the jet stream and bring more extreme weather to the
US, Stroeve said.

The new report reveals 'just the latest disturbing data point in a
disturbing trend wherein climate changes are happening even faster than
we had forecast,' Pennsylvania State University climate scientist
Michael Mann said.

However, Nasa adds that the cap of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean is always changing.

Each winter it grows dramatically, usually reaching its maximum in
March.It melts just as dramatically each summer, reaching its minimum in
September.

In 2015-16, that winter growth got off to a leisurely start due in part to a month of unusually warm weather in the region.

They link this to a phenomenon known as the Arctic Oscillation. This
involves differences in air pressure over the Arctic and lower
latitudes.

Scientists say a shift in the Arctic Oscillation likely weakened the
atmospheric barrier between the polar latitudes and the mid-latitudes

The village of Shishmaref is as much a global symbol as an Alaska town.
Located on Sarichef Island off the northern coast of the Seward
Peninsula, the tiny community is remote even by Alaska standards. The
population, which hovers around 560 residents, is almost entirely
Inupiat and the economy primarily built around subsistence rather than
cash.

What brought Shishmaref international renown is its precarious state.
Sarichef is eroding in no small part due to the pernicious effects of
climate change. There’s no question that the village will be abandoned
at some point in the relatively near future. This impending fate has
brought researchers and reporters from all over the world into town, and
their consensus is that the residents of Shishmaref will soon be among
the world’s first people to become climate refugees in the truest sense
of the term.

The reality is somewhat more complicated.

“Fierce Climate Sacred Ground” is a brief book by Oregon State
University-Cascades anthropology professor Elizabeth Marino. Based on
her ethnographic studies of the people of Shishmaref, it places their
plight in a broader context than just global warming. Drawn from her
doctoral dissertation, written while she was a graduate student at the
University of Alaska, Fairbanks, it’s a somewhat academically oriented
work, but one that remains accessible. It is essential reading for the
heightened perspective it offers on a situation too often simplified for
the purposes of those with differing political objectives.

The popular version of the story, Marino explains, is that Shishmaref is
a small village of people living a deeply traditional lifestyle who are
in danger of losing everything to forces far away and beyond their
control. This understanding is true to an extent, but it overlooks the
history of the community.

Government role

What has caused Shishmaref to stand out for many is the somewhat
mistaken belief that unlike climate refugees elsewhere on the planet,
residents of this village are losing their homes entirely to climate
change. This differs from climate crises in developing nations, where a
combination of political ineptitude, economic failures and environmental
challenges created vulnerable populations and where rising temperatures
are simply the final blow to fragile communities.

As Marino explains, in America we like to think that our own government
didn’t play a role in creating problems like the one in Shishmaref. She
doesn’t explicitly say it, but this view is useful to both
environmentalists and economic conservatives. For environmentalists it
means the entirety of the situation can be blamed on human carbon
emissions, while conservatives can insist that since the government
didn’t place the village on Sarichef, it shouldn’t be responsible for
relocating it.

In truth, the government did play an important role in locating the
town. Shishmaref has on one level existed hundreds of years, but
historically it was a seasonally occupied settlement used by people who
migrated across the landscape seeking the best places to gather
food.

Early in the 20th century the U.S. government pursued a deliberate
policy of ending all nomadic lifestyles among Native Americans. The
people of Shishmaref weren’t forcibly collectivized in the way that
Natives were elsewhere in the country in the 19th century, but the
government’s opening of a school in Shishmaref, coupled with the onset
of compulsory education, had the same effect.

For the traditionally mobile Inupiat who settled there, Shishmaref made a
certain amount of sense. It’s ideally located for winter hunting on sea
ice and close enough to the mainland to access traditional subsistence
grounds in summer. It was, however, always tenuous ground to build
on.

Desperate situation

Erosion has been impacting Sarichef for a very long time, and as early
as the 1970s there was already talk of moving Shishmaref to the
mainland.

The problem is that the village itself lacks the resources to do so,
while neither the state of Alaska nor the federal government is eager to
pick up the tab, and the bureaucratic hurdles are enormous.

Compounding residents’ woes, since it is considered temporary even by
some of the people who live there, the village has not seen the sort of
upgrades other rural communities in Alaska have received. Instead a
series of mostly failed stopgap measures have been taken to try to ward
off erosion while the decision of where and when to move the town keeps
getting studied and discussed into oblivion. Meanwhile, the steadily
lengthening ice-free season has left shorelines exposed to storms that
themselves are aggravated by climate change, speeding the pace of
erosion and consistently thwarting efforts at maintaining the ground
beneath the town.

For residents of Shishmaref, it’s a desperate situation. As a people
they have lived in the region for centuries, and they see remaining
there as integral to their cultural identity. If, as many have
suggested, they simply integrate into other towns, they lose their sense
of who they are. For the people of Shishmaref, Marino explains, this
would be cultural genocide. Their lands and subsistence lifestyle define
them. Everything else about their culture has already been taken away.
That they live in a town rather than nomadically was entirely due to
decisions made in Washington, D.C., and Juneau. Their present dilemma
springs from a history over which they were often deprived of a say.
What they want most this time is a voice in their own fate.

Midway through her book, Marino asks, “Is the risk posed to Shishmaref
the product of climate change or the product of a history of development
that ignored local knowledge and removed local adaptation strategies?”
While much of the reporting on Shishmaref has focused on the former
cause, Marino’s important book shows us that, in her own words, “the
simple equation that anthropogenic climate change = erosion = relocation
is not an accurate analysis of this complex sociological system.”

Pick up a research paper on battery technology, fuel cells, energy
storage technologies or any of the advanced materials science used in
these fields, and you will likely find somewhere in the introductory
paragraphs a throwaway line about its application to the storage of
renewable energy. Energy storage makes sense for enabling a
transition away from fossil fuels to more intermittent sources like wind
and solar, and the storage problem presents a meaningful challenge for
chemists and materials scientists… Or does it?

Guest Post by John Morgan. John is Chief Scientist at a Sydney startup
developing smart grid and grid scale energy storage technologies.
He is Adjunct Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer
Engineering at RMIT, holds a PhD in Physical Chemistry, and is an
experienced industrial R&D leader. You can follow John on
twitter at @JohnDPMorgan. First published in Chemistry in Australia.

Several recent analyses of the inputs to our energy systems indicate
that, against expectations, energy storage cannot solve the problem of
intermittency of wind or solar power. Not for reasons of technical
performance, cost, or storage capacity, but for something more
intractable: there is not enough surplus energy left over after
construction of the generators and the storage system to power our
present civilization.

The problem is analysed in an important paper by Weißbach et al.1 in
terms of energy returned on energy invested, or EROEI – the ratio of the
energy produced over the life of a power plant to the energy that was
required to build it. It takes energy to make a power plant – to
manufacture its components, mine the fuel, and so on. The power
plant needs to make at least this much energy to break even. A
break-even powerplant has an EROEI of 1. But such a plant would
pointless, as there is no energy surplus to do the useful things we use
energy for.

There is a minimum EROEI, greater than 1, that is required for an energy
source to be able to run society. An energy system must produce a
surplus large enough to sustain things like food production, hospitals,
and universities to train the engineers to build the plant, transport,
construction, and all the elements of the civilization in which it is
embedded.

For countries like the US and Germany, Weißbach et al. estimate this
minimum viable EROEI to be about 7. An energy source with lower
EROEI cannot sustain a society at those levels of complexity, structured
along similar lines. If we are to transform our energy system, in
particular to one without climate impacts, we need to pay close
attention to the EROEI of the end result.

The EROEI values for various electrical power plants are summarized in
the figure. The fossil fuel power sources we’re most accustomed to
have a high EROEI of about 30, well above the minimum
requirement. Wind power at 16, and concentrating solar power (CSP,
or solar thermal power) at 19, are lower, but the energy surplus is
still sufficient, in principle, to sustain a developed industrial
society. Biomass, and solar photovoltaic (at least in Germany),
however, cannot. With an EROEI of only 3.9 and 3.5 respectively,
these power sources cannot support with their energy alone both their
own fabrication and the societal services we use energy for in a first
world country.

Energy Returned on Invested, from Weißbach et al.,1 with and without
energy storage (buffering). CCGT is closed-cycle gas
turbine. PWR is a Pressurized Water (conventional nuclear)
Reactor. Energy sources must exceed the “economic threshold”, of
about 7, to yield the surplus energy required to support an OECD level
society.
Energy Returned on Invested, from Weißbach et al.,1 with and without
energy storage (buffering). CCGT is closed-cycle gas
turbine. PWR is a Pressurized Water (conventional nuclear)
Reactor. Energy sources must exceed the “economic threshold”, of
about 7, to yield the surplus energy required to support an OECD level
society.

These EROEI values are for energy directly delivered (the “unbuffered”
values in the figure). But things change if we need to store
energy. If we were to store energy in, say, batteries, we must
invest energy in mining the materials and manufacturing those
batteries. So a larger energy investment is required, and the
EROEI consequently drops.

Weißbach et al. calculated the EROEIs assuming pumped hydroelectric
energy storage. This is the least energy intensive storage
technology. The energy input is mostly earthmoving and
construction. It’s a conservative basis for the calculation;
chemical storage systems requiring large quantities of refined specialty
materials would be much more energy intensive. Carbajales-Dale et
al.2 cite data asserting batteries are about ten times more energy
intensive than pumped hydro storage.

Adding storage greatly reduces the EROEI (the “buffered” values in the
figure). Wind “firmed” with storage, with an EROEI of 3.9, joins
solar PV and biomass as an unviable energy source. CSP becomes
marginal (EROEI ~9) with pumped storage, so is probably not viable with
molten salt thermal storage. The EROEI of solar PV with pumped
hydro storage drops to 1.6, barely above breakeven, and with battery
storage is likely in energy deficit.

This is a rather unsettling conclusion if we are looking to renewable
energy for a transition to a low carbon energy system: we cannot use
energy storage to overcome the variability of solar and wind power.

In particular, we can’t use batteries or chemical energy storage
systems, as they would lead to much worse figures than those presented
by Weißbach et al. Hydroelectricity is the only renewable power
source that is unambiguously viable. However, hydroelectric
capacity is not readily scaled up as it is restricted by suitable
geography, a constraint that also applies to pumped hydro storage.

This particular study does not stand alone. Closer to home,
Springer have just published a monograph, Energy in Australia,3 which
contains an extended discussion of energy systems with a particular
focus on EROEI analysis, and draws similar conclusions to
Weißbach. Another study by a group at Stanford2 is more
optimistic, ruling out storage for most forms of solar, but suggesting
it is viable for wind. However, this viability is judged only on
achieving an energy surplus (EROEI>1), not sustaining society
(EROEI~7), and excludes the round trip energy losses in storage, finite
cycle life, and the energetic cost of replacement of storage. Were
these included, wind would certainly fall below the sustainability
threshold.

It’s important to understand the nature of this EROEI limit. This
is not a question of inadequate storage capacity – we can’t just buy or
make more storage to make it work. It’s not a question of energy
losses during charge and discharge, or the number of cycles a battery
can deliver. We can’t look to new materials or technological
advances, because the limits at the leading edge are those of
earthmoving and civil engineering. The problem can’t be addressed
through market support mechanisms, carbon pricing, or cost
reductions. This is a fundamental energetic limit that will likely
only shift if we find less materially intensive methods for dam
construction.

This is not to say wind and solar have no role to play. They can
expand within a fossil fuel system, reducing overall emissions.
But without storage the amount we can integrate in the grid is greatly
limited by the stochastically variable output. We could, perhaps,
build out a generation of solar and wind and storage at high
penetration. But we would be doing so on an endowment of fossil
fuel net energy, which is not sustainable. Without storage, we
could smooth out variability by building redundant generator capacity
over large distances. But the additional infrastructure also
forces the EROEI down to unviable levels. The best way to think
about wind and solar is that they can reduce the emissions of fossil
fuels, but they cannot eliminate them. They offer mitigation, but
not replacement.

Nor is this to say there is no value in energy storage. Battery
systems in electric vehicles clearly offer potential to reduce
dependency on, and emissions from, oil (provided the energy is sourced
from clean power). Rooftop solar power combined with four hours of
battery storage can usefully timeshift peak electricity demand,3
reducing the need for peaking power plants and grid expansion. And
battery technology advances make possible many of our recently
indispensable consumer electronics. But what storage can’t do is
enable significant replacement of fossil fuels by renewable energy.

If we want to cut emissions and replace fossil fuels, it can be done,
and the solution is to be found in the upper right of the figure.
France and Ontario, two modern, advanced societies, have all but
eliminated fossil fuels from their electricity grids, which they have
built from the high EROEI sources of hydroelectricity and nuclear
power. Ontario in particular recently burnt its last tonne of
coal, and each jurisdiction uses just a few percent of gas fired
power. This is a proven path to a decarbonized electricity grid.

But the idea that advances in energy storage will enable renewable
energy is a chimera – the Catch-22 is that in overcoming intermittency
by adding storage, the net energy is reduced below the level required to
sustain our present civilization.

BNC Postscript

When this article was published in CiA some readers had difficulty with
the idea of a minimum societal EROI. Why can’t we make do with any
positive energy surplus, if we just build more plant? Hall4
breaks it down with the example of oil:

Think of a society dependent upon one resource: its domestic oil. If the
EROI for this oil was 1.1:1 then one could pump the oil out of the
ground and look at it. If it were 1.2:1 you could also refine it and
look at it, 1.3:1 also distribute it to where you want to use it but all
you could do is look at it. Hall et al. 2008 examined the EROI required
to actually run a truck and found that if the energy included was
enough to build and maintain the truck and the roads and bridges
required to use it, one would need at least a 3:1 EROI at the wellhead.

Now if you wanted to put something in the truck, say some grain, and
deliver it, that would require an EROI of, say, 5:1 to grow the grain.
If you wanted to include depreciation on the oil field worker, the
refinery worker, the truck driver and the farmer you would need an EROI
of say 7 or 8:1 to support their families. If the children were to be
educated you would need perhaps 9 or 10:1, have health care 12:1, have
arts in their life maybe 14:1, and so on. Obviously to have a modern
civilization one needs not simply surplus energy but lots of it, and
that requires either a high EROI or a massive source of moderate EROI
fuels.

What could the theory of “ego depletion” possibly have to do with global warming?

Ego depletion is the idea in psychology that humans have a limited
amount of willpower that can be depleted. It’s been largely accepted as
true for almost two decades, after two psychologists devised an
experiment in self-control that involved fresh-baked cookies and
radishes.

One group of test subjects were told they could only eat the radishes,
another could eat the cookies. Then they were given an unsolvable puzzle
to solve. The researchers found that radish eaters gave up on the
puzzle more quickly than the cookie eaters. The conclusion was that the
radish eaters had used up their willpower trying not to eat the cookies.

Daniel Engber, writing in Slate, notes that the study has been cited
more than 3,000 times, and that in the years after it appeared, its
findings “have been borne out again and again in empirical studies. The
effect has been recreated in hundreds of different ways, and the
underlying concept has been verified via meta-analysis. It’s not some
crazy new idea, wobbling on a pile of flimsy data; it’s a sturdy edifice
of knowledge, built over many years from solid bricks.”

But, he says, it “could be completely bogus.”

A “massive effort” to recreate “the main effect underlying this work”
using 2,000 subjects in two-dozen different labs on several continents
found … nothing.

The study, due to be published next month in Perspectives on
Psychological Science, “means an entire field of study — and significant
portions of certain scientists’ careers — could be resting on a false
premise.”

Engber laments that “If something this well-established could fall
apart, then what’s next? That’s not just worrying. It’s terrifying.”

Actually, it’s science.

As Thomas Kuhn explained in his 1962 book “The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions,” this kind of event is typical in the course of scientific
progress.

A “paradigm” takes hold in the scientific community based on early
research, which subsequent studies appear to confirm, but which can
later collapse as findings that don’t fit the paradigm start to
accumulate. Kuhn found several such “paradigm shifts” in history.

The ego depletion findings also come as scientists are starting to
realize that much, if not most, of what gets published is essentially
bogus because it can’t be reproduced by subsequent studies.

“By some estimates,” notes an article in Quartz, “at least 51% — and as
much as 89% — of published papers are based on studies and experiments
showing results that cannot be reproduced.”

The Quartz article says one reason is a bias in scientific journals to produce “exciting studies that show strong results.”

“Studies that show strong, positive results get published, while similar
studies that come up with no significant effects sit at the bottom of
researchers’ drawers.”

So what does any of this have to do with global warming?

Democrats routinely accuse Republicans of being “anti-science” because
they tend to be skeptical about claims made by climate scientists —
whether it’s about how much man has contributed to global warming, how
much warming has actually taken place, or scary predictions of future
environmental catastrophes.

There’s a scientific consensus, we’re told, and anyone who doesn’t toe the line is “denier.”

Yet even as deniers get chastised, evidence continues to emerge that pokes holes in some of the basic tenets of climate change.

Evidence such as the fact that actual temperature trends don’t match
what climate change computer models say should have happened since the
industrial age. Or that satellite measurements haven’t shown warming for
two decades. Or that past predictions of more extreme weather have
failed to come true.

It is certainly possible then, that today’s climate change paradigm —
and all the fear and loathing about CO2 emissions — could one day end up
looking as quaint as Ptolemy’s theory of the solar system or Galen’s
theory of anatomy.

Some politicians and environmental activists have been quick to call for
blanket bans on hydraulic fracturing under claims that the process is
poisoning America’s drinking water. Scientific evidence, from both
government agencies and independent analyses, proves otherwise.

For instance, The Environmental Protection Agency’s last study, released
in June of 2015 and the most comprehensive government study on
fracking’s impact so far, clearly states that “we did not find evidence …
[of] widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the
United States.”

The EPA’s analysis is hardly the first study to refute the oft-repeated
myth that fracking poses a serious threat to American drinking water. In
2009, the Department of Energy conducted a report that declared
fracking “safe and effective.” In 2014, the Department of Energy
released another study of the Marcellus Shale that found no evidence of
fracking contaminating water supplies.

Again in 2014, the National Academy of Sciences released a a report
finding that the contamination of water resources in Pennsylvania and
Texas were attributable to well leaks, not hydraulic fracturing.

Groundwater aquifers sit thousands of feet above the level at which
fracking takes place, and energy companies construct wells with
steel-surface casings and cement barriers to prevent gas migration If
any leaks or contamination does occur, companies should pay for the
economic and environmental damages they cause from such well leaks. But
these leaks are not a systemic problem of the industry, much less
something that causes widespread polluted water.

Such statements by progressives and environmental activists, manifestly
in conflict with actual experience and the science of the issue, pose a
serious threat to the vast economic benefits of fracking. Scholars of
all stripes agree that fracking is excellent for the economy, providing
Americans with jobs, communities near fracking wells with economic
booms, and U.S. households with significant energy savings. According a
recent Energy Information Administration report:

Wholesale electricity prices at major trading hubs on a monthly average
basis for on-peak hours were down 27 to 37 percent across the nation in
2015 compared with 2014, driven largely by lower natural gas prices.

Prices at the pump are down significantly, too, allowing American
families to keep more of their money to use for other purposes. The
current average price of regular gasoline is less than $2 per gallon.
Many factors contribute to the price of gas, but domestic supply is a
key component.

We save money not only through lower energy bills and cheaper gasoline,
but through cheaper goods and services, because energy is a necessary
component for just about all we do. Lower gas prices also reduce input
and transportation costs for businesses around the country, savings that
are also passed on to consumers through reduced prices in other sectors
of the economy.

Moreover, hydraulic fracturing benefits low-income families most of all,
which is why the Wall Street Journal termed fracking “America’s best
antipoverty program.” Such an energy revolution should be embraced, not
rejected out of hand.

Anti-fracking rhetoric not only conflicts with experience and science,
but ignores the effective state-based regulatory system in place. The
process has been regulated successfully at the state level for decades.

States have the most to gain when they permits fracking to take place,
but also the most to lose if the process is done irresponsibly. The
states’ effective regulation underscores the need for members of
Congress to prevent duplicative federal intervention that would
unnecessarily stall the oil and gas boom and drive up costs for
producers and therefore consumers.

Fracking has safely provided a much needed boon to the American economy.
Attacking it with unfounded rhetoric is an assault not just on the
industry itself, but on American businesses and families who benefit
from the influx of domestic natural gas and oil fracking companies
supply. Congress should resist the demands of the environmental lobby
and put more authority in the hands of the states, not less.

I don't get a lot of emails or blog comments from Leftists but those I
do get are invariably abusive. Most conservative bloggers have
that experience, I gather. But sometimes the abuse is
unintentionally amusing.

I recently got an email from an apparently Australian person named Leigh
Williams (willeye1978@gmail.com) who gave his mobile phone no. as
0405205252. He started his first email with something I certainly
believe: "I don't know anything about the specifics of climate change
science". But there was no rational argument or presentation of
facts after that. It was just abuse. So it was solid "ad hominem"
abuse.

But here's the funny bit: What did he accuse me of? He
accused me of "ad hominem abuse"! That good old Leftist projection
cut in good and hard!

He appeared to be upset that I had spoken ill of someone but did not say
whom. Since he mentioned climate however, I imagine he might be
referring to my comments on writings by Warmism acolyte Sarah
Perkins-Kirkpatrick. I put up her university picture and called
her "gorgeous" in a subtitle to it. That is abuse? Calling someone
"gorgeous" is abuse? Leigh Williams is certainly in a mental
fog. But most of the Green/Left seem to be in a permanent mental
fog.

In any case, there is no reason why Leftists should have any monopoly of
criticizing others. If you offer facts and arguments in criticism
of somebody else's claims that is a reasonable and routine thing to
do. When you offer no facts and arguments but proceed straight to
abuse that is what is called "ad hominem abuse". And I did offer facts
and figures in support of my disagreement with Ms. Perkins-Kirkpatrick.
Strictly speaking, an "ad hominem" argument is one where you accept or
reject a claim SOLELY because of who made it. But that was all too
deep for the foggy one.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

29 March, 2016

Medical researchers embrace open access to research data

Will Warmists follow suit? Not likely

Warmist "scientists" regularly disgrace themselves by refusing to make
publicly available their raw research data. What was once a
routine courtesy has been destroyed by Warmist crookedness. But
the recent uproar in the social and biological sciences about
unreplicable findings makes the issue more critical than ever. It
is clear that researchers regularly sift through their data and report
only the bits that they like for whatever reason. And from a
statistician's viewpoint the regular practice in the medical literature
of reporting only extreme quintiles is simply laughable. Who knows
what relaationships are obscured by throwing away three fifths of your
data? So there is clearly much to be gained by having the analysis
of a dataset open to all comers.

And the medical literature is coming onboard with that. Below are
two scans from the latest issue of JAMA. The point of the second
scan is that even those evil old drug companies are making their raw
research data generally available. So Warmists are less ethical
than drug companies. Drug companies are a favorite hate-object of
the Green/Left so that contrast would embarrass them if they were
real scientists.

A vegan who loves nukes

There is a HUGE rant by Geoff Russell on "New Matilda" about
global warming being caused by farm animals. It bemuses me to see
how many words the Green/Left usually take to make their points and this
is an example of that. The article seems to go on forever. The
Green/Left must be boiling with rage to pour out so many bile-filled
words.

And despite all those words absolutely nothing is
said about how humans have evolved to be omnivores and that any attempt
to take meat off our dinner tables would be so widely and strongly
resisted as to make the attempt futile. He seems to think it is only a
"conspiracy" that keeps us eating meat. What a wacko!

He also dosn't question global warming orthodoxy but that is unsurprising. It gives him a hook to hang his vegan crusade on.

That
he is actually capable of critical thought is revealed by the second
oddity about him. He likes nuclear power. That's perfectly
rational if you believe in the evils of CO2 and CH4 but is rare on the
Green/left.

And speaking of CH4, the usual swipe that Warmists
take at farm animals is at their farts, which do have a lot of CH4 in
them. But CH4 intercepts warming in certain wavelengths only and
water vapour also absorbs those wavelengths so the theoretical effect of
CH4 on global warming translates in practice to a nil effect. So that
part of Mr Russell's argument is a washout.

It's amusing,
though, that Mr Russell aims primarily at fellow Greenies. He
thinks they are conveniently overlooking a major source of global
warming. Just a few excerpts:

The makers of the US eco-ethical-documentary “Cowspiracy” are attempting
to explain why the world’s largest environmental organisations have
ignored the role of meat in both climate change and more generally in
trashing the planet.

They use the well-worn tactic of simply asking them… or trying to. When
it comes to slandering people for buggering the planet, Greenpeace
apparently thinks it’s more noble to give than to receive, so they
aren’t keen on being asked inconvenient questions.

This doco has lots of Michael Moore moments. People knocking on doors,
asking pointed questions and getting sheepish looks. All the big US
players get a mention: The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, NRDC, Rainforest
Action Network, Amazon Watch, and more.

These groups all love asserting the high moral ground and aren’t used to
being questioned about their submersion in a deep trench of cattle
excrement.

The inconvenient truth is that none of these environmental icons care
enough about their beloved planet to order the vegan option, let alone
make the whole menu vegan.

In the case of Greenpeace, their PR people did the old “turn that camera
off” shuffle and refused to be interviewed; … priceless!

But after all the fun and games… does Cowspiracy actually explain the
inaction of at least the US environmental movement on the meat and dairy
industries? Is it really a conspiracy? Is it organised and funded?

US Professor of Nutrition, Marion Nestle blew the whistle years ago with
“Food Politics” on how the meat industry stacked and bullied US
Government nutritional advice committees.

Cowspiracy lacks Nestle’s academic rigor, but still delivers a few hits.

When asked if the meat and dairy industries donate to environmental
organisations, the Animal Agriculture Alliance spokesperson looked like a
kid caught with both hands and feet in the cookie jar, and said she
couldn’t comment. She refused to answer a direct question about funding
Greenpeace.

In Australia, the funding link is clear and a matter of public record.
As is the lack of any major campaign against meat by the big green
groups (ACF, FOE, AYCC, Greens to name but a few) getting this funding.
Tim Flannery is also a recipient of pastoral largess from the bovine
broverhood.

Let’s be clear here: different meats have different impacts. It gets
tiresome to differentiate constantly, so I’ll do it once now.

Ruminants are the primary climate culprits by way of methane and
deforestation, while pigs and chickens primarily pollute air, water and
other foods while diverting deforested land from food to feed, while
also killing people directly via new diseases (e.g. Swine Flu) while
adding to our risk of losing antibiotics.

The cattle barons supporting our big green groups obviously don’t care
that their funding is common knowledge. Why? Probably because our
mainstream media don’t give a damn. Aussie BBQ culture is at least as
strong here as in the US; and don’t forget meat industry
advertising.....

Environmental tribalism has our environmental groups automatically
anti-GM and anti-nuclear as a matter of ideology. This illustrates a
profoundly anti-science bias. They simply don’t get it.

You can’t credibly accept climate science but reject any other science
which contradicts your policies. All the science of the last 30 years on
the causes of cancer and the mechanism of DNA repair contradict the
radiophobia behind green anti-nuclear policy.

When science conflicts with your policy, you may wait a little to make
sure the science is solid and well supported, but if it is, then you
change your policies. Any high school student can understand this,
except perhaps those in AYCC.

When your science is shallow and you don’t really understand the
process, you tend to pick and choose what you like. But science isn’t
like that.

The human population, even the 9 billion of us expected by 2050, could
actually live without doing too much environmental damage if we ate at
the bottom of the food chain (vegan) and used nuclear power for all our
energy needs.

Energy doesn’t have to have a large adverse footprint on the planet,
unless we go with sources having a low power density, like wind, solar
and biofuels. It is ironic that our environmental movement has opted for
the sources of energy that will have the most impact on wildlife
habitat, and therefore biodiversity.

Global warming will dump rain on dry areas – but not in a helpful way (?)

Some unwarranted journalistic enthusiasm below. The Donat study
simply showed that there will be more big storms. It showed
nothing about how helpful or unhelpful or how useful or unuseful they
would be. Donat speculated about that but his study had no way of
showing it

New research challenges the view that drier areas will get drier with
global warming. Climate scientists suggest that as the world warms, dry
regions will get more rain. Drought-stricken farmers, rejoice!

Hold the champers. While there will be more rain overall on populated
areas, it's unlikely to be useful, and may make life harder for those
unused to regular drenchings.

In a study published in Nature Climate Change, climate scientists from
Sydney's University of New South Wales and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology looked at 60 years of climate observations and modelled
future rainfall.

They found the tropics will receive more rain with climate change – as
will arid areas such as western and central Australia, California,
central Asia and southwestern Africa.

Most of the rainfall will be tied up in massive storms that could lead
to flash floods. Areas used to little rainfall may not be able to handle
such deluges.

"The concern with an increased frequency and in particular intensity of
extreme precipitation events in areas that are normally dry is that
there may not be infrastructure in place to cope with extreme flooding
events," lead author Markus Donat says.

And when it's not pouring, the added heat in the atmosphere will lead to more evaporation.

While climate modelling studies have suggested that wet parts of the
world will become wetter while dry parts of the world will become drier,
this, the authors argue, holds for large-scale simulations over oceans,
not land.

To determine how wet and dry parts of the world will fare under climate
change, the researchers decided to steer clear of comparing wet places
to dry and try to work out the complexities between the two. Instead,
they compared like with like.

When the modelling was extended into the late 21st century, he saw that rate continue for arid regions.

They took the most extreme rainfall (as in, the most that fell in a day
in a year) from similarly dry land in Australia, Asia, Africa and
elsewhere from 1951 to 2010. They repeated it with similarly wet regions
across the world.

They averaged, separately, the extreme rainfall events across the wetter
and drier areas. Over the 60-year period, they saw the fraction of
annual rain that falls on the wettest day of the year matched what's
known as the Clausius-Clapeyron rate.

Named after German Rudolf Clausius and Frenchman Benoît Clapeyron, both
physicists known for their work in thermodynamics, the
Clausius-Clapeyron rate predicts those days of extreme rainfall should
increase by 6 to 7% per 1°C of warming.

Donat's simulations, using a general climate model, of that period
matched the observations. When the modelling was extended into the late
21st century, he saw that rate continue for arid regions.

And while the tropics will receive more rain, Donat admits exactly how
much is as yet unclear. This could be because there's simply less
historical data from those areas.

William Ingram, a climate scientist at Oxford University, writes in a
News and Views article that while the work won't help local
meteorologists forecast days of extreme rainfall, it tells us "how risks
will change – which is precisely the information needed by emergency
planners".

Scientific detective work stopped cholera – now it needs to separate myths, mites and neonics

Paul Driessen

If modern activist groups held sway in the mid-nineteenth century,
countless multitudes would have died from typhoid fever and cholera. The
“miasma” paradigm held that the diseases were caused by foul air
arising from putrid matter – and only dogged scientific work by William
Budd, John Snow and others finally convinced medical and health
authorities that the agent was lethal organisms in drinking water.

Ultimately, the investigators’ persistence led to discoveries of Vibrio
and Salmonella bacteria, the use of chlorine-based disinfectants for
drains, water purification and hand washing, programs that kept sewage
away from drinking water supplies, and steady advances in germ and virus
theories of medicine.

Parallels exist today, with activist politics driving the science,
rather than solid science guiding informed public policy decisions. One
such arena is neonicotinoid pesticides and large-scale bee deaths.

Europeans introduced domesticated honeybees to North America in the
early 1600s. They helped foster phenomenal growth in important food
crops like tomatoes and almonds. Indeed, over 60% of all U.S. beehives
are needed each spring just to pollinate California’s extensive almond
groves. By contrast, staples like wheat, rice, corn and most citrus
fruits do not require animal pollination at all (by bees, hummingbirds,
hover flies, butterflies and bats); these crops are self-pollinating or
wind-pollinated.

Commercial beekeeping grew steadily, and today about 1% of all
beekeepers manage nearly 80% of the 2.7 million U.S. honeybee colonies.
The system generally functioned well until 1987, when a vicious new pest
arrived. As the appropriately named Varroa destructor mite spread,
beekeepers began reporting major to total losses of bees in Iowa,
Michigan and Wisconsin hives in spring 2006, and later in Florida, the
Dakotas, southern states, both U.S. coasts, Europe and elsewhere.

Dubbed “colony collapse disorder” (CCD), the problem led to scarifying
news stories about a “bee-pocalypse” and the imminent demise of modern
agriculture. However, inexplicable bee colony losses had been reported
in 1898, 1903, the 1960s and 1970s – even as far back as 940 AD in
Ireland!

Explanations included an undefined “disappearing disease,”
organophosphate pesticides, cell phone towers, GM crops that embed Bt
insect killers in their genetic makeup, climate change (of course), and
even a lack of “moral fiber” in bees, Paradigms and Demographics
blogspot editor Rich Kozlovich notes. A psychic, he adds, claimed she
was communicating with domesticated bees, who told her they were tired
of being enslaved by humans and were leaving their hives to protest
their crowded, inhumane conditions!

Mounting evidence suggests that today’s die-offs are primarily due to
Varroa mites, along with parasitic phorid flies, Nosema fungal
parasites, the tobacco ringspot virus – and even beekeepers misusing or
over-using pesticides in hives to control disease outbreaks, by killing
tiny bugs on little bees.

However, anti-pesticide activists and some news stories continue to
blame colony deaths and other bee problems on neonicotinoid
insecticides. This new class of chemicals protects crops primarily (97%
of the time) by coating seeds, letting plants incorporate the pesticide
into their leaves and stems, to target insects that feed on them,
without harming beneficial bugs. The regular rotation of different
neonic products is also the only means currently available to kill the
Asian psyllids that spread “citrus greening disease” (HLB), which is
decimating citrus groves in Florida and is now spreading to Texas and
California groves.

This is where solid scientific detective work becomes vital. Without it,
the wrong conclusions are drawn, the wrong “solutions” are applied, and
the unintended consequences can be serious. For example, banning
neonics will likely mean farmers are forced to use insecticides that
truly are dangerous for bees.

Over the past 50 years, Varroa mites have killed off millions of
honeybee colonies around the world, scientists note. Among the diseases
the mites carry is deformed wing virus, which results in short, twisted
or otherwise deformed and useless wings. Like many other viral
infections, DWV had long been present in hives, but was generally
considered harmless before Varroa became ubiquitous. Disease-carrying
mites bite through the bees’ hard shell (exoskeleton) and inject viruses
and infections directly into the bee blood (hemolymph). The mites’
saliva also carries an enzyme that compromises the bees’ immune systems,
making the diseases far more toxic. Modern transportation methods
disperse the problems far and wide.

Making the beekeepers’ challenge even more daunting, female Varroas
often lay eggs in the same hexagonal beehive cells where the queen lays
newly fertilized eggs, before worker bees “cap” the incubator cells. New
honeybees then emerge with an infected mite already attached. And to
top it off:

Trying to kill vicious bugs you can’t even see, in a box filled with
some 40,000 buzzing bees that you don’t want to hurt, using chemicals
that could easily become toxic – and that the Varroa mites quickly
become resistant to – is a devilishly complicated business, beekeepers
like Randy Oliver attest. In fact, they are already on their third
generation of miticides, and Varroa have become resistant to all of
them. So the battle rages on, as pesticide companies again try to gain
the upper hand against the crafty pests.

Varroa was discovered on Oahu in August 2007. By spring 2008, 274 of 419
honeybee colonies on Oahu had collapsed, and wild bees had disappeared
from its urban areas. Despite quarantine measures, by late 2010 the mite
spread throughout the island of Hawaii. Now even effective Varroa
control cannot eradicate DWV, since the disease is in their hemolymph
and transmitted through feeding and sexual activity.

Studies in the United Kingdom and New Zealand found similar mite, DWV infection and CCD patterns.

Another nasty plague on honeybee houses involves parasitic phorid flies,
which have now been found in California, Vermont and South Dakota
hives. The flies stab bee abdomens and lay their eggs inside. When they
hatch, fly larvae attack the bees’ bodies and brains, disorienting them
and causing them to fly in circles and at night – giving rise to stories
about zombie bees, or “zombees.” As the larvae mature into new flies,
they exit the bees at their necks, decapitating them. Not surprisingly,
phorid flies also carry DWV, Nosema parasites and other bee diseases.

Meanwhile, in the real world where bees interact with nature,
agriculture and pesticides (rather than with artificial laboratory
conditions and egregious over-exposure to those pesticides), multiple
studies in Canadian and other countries’ canola and corn fields have
concluded that neonicotinoids do not harm bees when used properly. And
in equally good news, U.S. Department of Agriculture, StatsCanada, EU
and UN data show that bee populations have been increasing over the past
several years, with American and Canadian colony totals reaching their
highest levels in a decade or more.

And yet, news stories still say neonics threaten domesticated and wild
bees with zombee-ism and extinction. That’s partly because
anti-pesticide groups are well funded, well organized, sophisticated in
public relations, and aided by journalists who are lazy, gullible,
believe the activist claims and support their cause, or simply live by
the mantra “if it bleeds, it leads.” A phony bee-pocalypse sells papers.

The activists employ Saul Alinsky tactics to achieve political goals by
manipulating science. They select and vilify a target. Devise a
“scientific study” that predicts a public health disaster. Release it to
the media, before honest scientists can analyze and criticize it.
Generate “news” stories featuring emotional headlines and public
consternation. Develop a Bigger Government “solution,” and intimidate
legislators and regulators until they impose it. Pressure manufacturers
to stop making and selling the product.

Too often, the campaigns are accompanied by callous attitudes about the
unintended consequences. If banning neonics means older, more toxic
pesticides kill millions of bees, so be it. If a DDT ban gives
environmentalists more power and influence, millions of children and
parents dying from malaria might be an acceptable price; at least they
won’t be exposed to exaggerated or fabricated risks from DDT.

When activism and politics drives science, both science and society pay
dearly. The stakes are too high, for wildlife and people, to let this
continue. The perpetrators must be outed and defanged.

McCarthy admitted as much after being questioned by West Virginia
Republican Rep. David McKinley, who pressed the EPA chief on why the
Obama administration was moving forward with economically-damaging
regulations that do nothing for the environment.

“I don’t understand,” McKinley said in a Tuesday hearing. “If it doesn’t
have an impact on climate change around the world, why are we
subjecting our hard working taxpayers and men and women in the coal
fields to something that has no benefit?”

“We see it as having had enormous benefit in showing sort of domestic
leadership as well as garnering support around the country for the
agreement we reached in Paris,” McCarthy responded.

McKinley was referring to EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan, which forces
states to cut carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.
The CPP is expected to double the amount of coal plant closings in the
coming years, and even EPA admits it won’t have a measurable impact on
projected global warming.

EPA has long argued the point of the CPP was to show the world America
was serious about tackling global warming in order to galvanize support
for United Nations delegates to sign a global agreement to cut
emissions. Nearly 200 countries agreed to a U.N. deal last year.

“But even then no one is following us,” McKinley said. “Since that Paris
accord China has already announced that they’re going to put up 360
[coal plants]. India has announced that they’re going to double their
use of coal since the Paris accord.”
China has made promises to curb its coal use in order to tackle the
country’s horrible air pollution problems, but China still plans on
using more coal in the future. Likewise, India promised in December to
double its coal production by 2020.

EPA, however, has bigger problems than global concern over warming. The
Supreme Court forced the agency to stop implementing its rule in
February, siding with a coalition of 29 states and state agencies suing
to have the CPP thrown out.

Because of Green bribery for "renewable" power from the former
Gillard government, Tasmania ran down its big hydro dams. So the
water is not now there when it is needed to cover a drought

Tasmania appears to be on the brink of a crisis, with the island state
only weeks away from serious blackouts if there is no significant
rainfall.

The seriousness of the issue at hand isn’t suggested by Techly as being
down to mismanagement by Tasmanian officials, simply a sequence of
unforeseen problems.

Multiple sources in Tasmania and the mainland describe the situation as dire.

Tasmania has just two months supply of water to feed its hydroelectric
dams, unless there is significant rainfall. Energy storage, or the level
of water available to generate hydro-power, is at historic lows.
Rainfall into catchment areas in the past 12-months has been around
one-third of projected rainfall, based on thirty-year modelling. Without
hydropower, Tasmania’s energy demands at normal peaks far exceed
current generation.

Dam levels were reduced during the carbon tax era, where hydroelectric
or carbon neutral power generation was extremely valuable. Hydro
Tasmania, the body who maintain and run a series of 55 major dams and 30
hydropower stations within, was very profitable during this time, as it
drained water for great revenues.

Indeed, in the quirks of the carbon tax arrangements, the sale of
renewable energy certificates or RECs accounted for more than 70 per
cent of revenue inflows. (It is not suggested that reducing dam levels
during this time was malfeasant.)

Basslink. Tasmania is supplied both power and data connections via the
Basslink submarine cable. That cable is no small matter – it runs for
370 kilometres undersea, it is rated to 500MW and cost over a half a
billion dollars to install between 2003-06, including testing and
commissioning.

However, on 21 December 2015, it was announced the Basslink was
disconnected due to a faulty interconnector. Given the cable is
underwater, and the fault was located as around approximately 100
kilometres off the Tasmanian coast, the Basslink controlling body called
Basslink first announced that it would be repaired and returned to
service by 19 March 2016.

That date has since fallen into the abyss as more than 100 experts,
including 16 or more from Italy, plus a specialist ship, try to fix the
cable. Basslink advised on March 13th that the cable would be fixed by
late May.

Normally, a Basslink outage isn’t a big deal. The mainland has to adjust
how it distributes power across the Eastern Seaboard, and given the
cable supplies an absolute peak of 500MW, it doesn’t shoulder the entire
load, but provides greater flexibility for operators, and reduces the
average cost of power. It also helps to balance peak and off-peak loads
across the grid.

Additional power from non-renewables in Tasmania includes three
significant gas turbine and thermal power stations which provide 535 MWh
of power at full capacity.

But Tasmania has far more hydroelectric power – more than 2300MW of hydropower at full capacity.

Techly understands that if Basslink can’t be fixed for an economic cost,
it may not be fixed at all, depending on the assessments currently
underway.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

28 March, 2016

The Next Great Global Warming 'Hiatus' Is Coming!

A strange argument from astrophysicist Ethan Siegel below. He
admits the recent influence of El Nino and says that recent temperaure
upticks therefore prove nothing by themselves. But he adds that
the long term trend measured over a century or more is upwards and that
THAT is what we should worry about.

He says "But the fact
that the global average temperature is rising — and that it continues to
rise — is a real long-term problem facing the entire world".

But
how does he know that? There has been NO steady rise in
temperature in C20. All we can factually say about the 20th
century temperature record is that there were some periods of warming
and other periods of cooling or stasis. Whether we will have more
periods of warming is completely unknown. We could have more
periods of cooling that will undo past warming. Nobody
knows. He has a sort of paranoid certainty about him that is
supported by no data

UPDATE: I must say that I found
Siegel's reasoning fascinating -- fascinating in a psychiatric sort of
way. I suspect that he may be manic. The file picture of himself
that he puts up would be unusual in a well person.

But I will do him the courtesy of taking him seriously and will add a few more comments.

You
can certainly put a rising trend line through the C20 temperature
record and it appears that Siegel has taken that for reality. It
isn't. It is a statistical artifact only. And it does not
describe the data well. Perhaps the most striking feature in the
data is the long stasis between 1945 and 1975 -- 30 years, almost a
third of the record. That totally busts any tale of continually
rising temperatures. It makes the C21 "hiatus" of nearly 20 years
look ephemeral in comparison.

Warmists of course dismiss the C21
stasis as in some way not meaningful. But how long does it have to
be for it to be meaningful? Warmists don't say these days but
when the C21 stasis was young, they said it would have to be 15 to
17 years long to represent anything. Now that it has exceeded
that mark they no longer put a number on the matter, which reveals their
argument as unscientific. If they had any basis for accepting or
rejecting meaningfulness, they would be able to put a number on it.

So
in that context the 30 year stasis tells us nothing either. But
it does. It tells us that the temperatures are
unpredictable. It tells us that we do NOT know what the future may
bring. But since we are at the end of a warm interglacial, my bet
would be on future cooling

Global warming has been occurring at a steady rate for many decades now —
possibly for over a century, depending on how you interpret the
temperature records — with the past few years setting unprecedented
temperature records around the globe. If you go back to 1948-49, the
earliest time we’ve had global temperature maps for the entire world,
you’ll find that over the vast majority of the Earth, there are more
locations seeing the warmest temperatures right now than at any other
time. But in terms of “cause for alarm,” what does this actually mean?

The first thing we have to realize is that there are two things at play
here: long-term trends, which is the gradual warming we’re seeing over
generational timescales, and short-term variations, which are due to
things like the seasons, volcanic eruptions, and weather events like El
Niño and La Niña. The record-breaking temperatures we’re seeing across
the globe are due to a combination of all the short-term and long-term
variations superimposed atop one another, and so although last month —
February of 2016 — was the hottest month ever recorded, that isn’t
necessarily a reason to freak out.

You see, we’re currently experiencing an El Niño event. If you take a
look back through the temperature record, many of the largest upward
“spikes” you see are due to El Niño years, such as the famous one in
1998. In fact, if you take a look at global average temperatures
throughout Februaries, we haven’t had one warmer than the one in 1998
until now.

This peak in temperatures that we’re seeing now, the one that spans from
2015-2016, isn’t due to global warming. That is to say, most of the
anomalously high temperatures we’re seeing are due to these short-term
variations. But what should be far more concerning to anyone who wants
to know the truth about climate change is this: the long-term rise in
temperatures is continuing at a steady rate. The fact that temperatures
appear to be rising at a rate of between 0.40-0.80 °C (0.72-1.44
°F) per century, unabated, is the real cause for concern. That’s what
global warming really is, the slow, long-term rise in temperatures.
That’s also the component that humans — through emissions reduction,
energy efficiency, renewable power, policy changes and (possibly)
geoengineering — can do something about.

But there’s an insidious argument that’s going to come up over the
coming years (and possibly the next decade or two), once the current
spike in temperature subsides: the idea that global warming will have
stopped. Global warming doesn’t just stop. It won’t stop unless there’s a
causative reason for it to stop, and — at present — there isn’t one.
But because the long-term rise (i.e., the “global warming” component) is
gradual, and the short-term variations (i.e., the fluctuations above an
below the trend-line) are large, it’s going to appear, over 13-to-17
year timescales, that global warming has ceased.

This is because the long-term rise can be easily masked by short-term
variations, and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study —
the one conducted by global warming skeptics that reached the same
conclusions as the rest of the climate science community — reached the
following conclusion:

"Some people draw a line segment covering the period 1998 to 2010 and
argue that we confirm no temperature change in that period. However, if
you did that same exercise back in 1995, and drew a horizontal line
through the data for 1980 to 1995, you might have falsely concluded that
global warming had stopped back then. This exercise simply shows that
the decadal fluctuations are too large to allow us to make decisive
conclusions about long term trends based on close examination of periods
as short as 13 to 15 years"

There are prominent climatologists who have made these arguments before
(who will likely make these arguments again), and they will be quoted in
a great many news outlets and by numerous science writers. If you see
an article that cites one of them claiming global warming has stopped
and it isn’t yet 2033, the 17 years from now that we’re required to wait
to see if the rise continues, please refer them back to this article.

Temperature spikes, like the one we’re experiencing now, are temporary,
and in all honestly are part of the normal variations we experience over
the short term. But the fact that the global average temperature is
rising — and that it continues to rise — is a real long-term problem
facing the entire world. Don’t let dishonest arguments that gloss over
the actual issue dissuade you from the scientific facts. We can fool
ourselves into believing that there isn’t a problem until it’s too late
to do anything about it, or we can own up to what the science tells us,
and face this problem with the full force of human ingenuity. The choice
is ours.

Well-known Warmist preacher Bill McKibben has an article out under the heading: "?Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry".
He is easily terrified in the hope that we will be too. Like a lot of
articles in Leftist publications, it is VERY long-winded. I
sometimes wonder about that. If they had purely factual statements
to make there would surely be no more than a few paragraphs
needed. Readers will note that my posts are very short. If
you know what you are talking about, it doesn't take long to say it.

Anyway, I will not attempt to reproduce any of the huge rant
concerned. The point of the article can indeed be presented with
great brevity. McKibben says that fracking releases methane into
the atmosphere and that methane there will soon fry us with global
warming. So he wants to stop fracking!

Such a simple story and so wrong. It's probably true that
atmospheric methane levels have increased as a result of leaks from
fracking but does that matter?

No. It is true that methane can absorb some heat from the
electromagnetic radiation that we get from the sun. And molecule
for molecule, it absorbs a lot more heat than does CO2.

Warmists normally stop the discussion there. But the atmosphere is
a complex thing and we have to look at methane in the context of what
normally goes on in the whole atmosphere. And it so happens that water
vapour absorbs the same wavelengths that methane does. And there
is a heck of a lot more water vapour in the atmosphere than
methane. So the water vapour will already have intercepted most or
all of the wavelengths that methane might -- leaving no heating effect
due to methane. The effects of CH4 are completely masked by H2O.
So methane is a POTENTIAL warming gas but not an ACTUAL one. No
foreseeable increase in methane would generate any increase in warming.

Isn't it strange that in his long article Bill McKibben found no space to discuss that matter? Just another climate crook.

Coral Reefs Bounce Back Despite Warming Of Oceans

This study is one of many to find that corals are very resilient

Coral reefs have managed to bounce back, despite being under constant
threat of extinction. However, marine scientists caution these fragile
ecosystems are still being threatened by global warming, pollution and
human activity.

The discovery of a large number of coral reefs in excellent health has
been quite a joyous occasion for the researchers who routinely deal with
ominous news like mass die-offs, worldwide bleaching events, oil
spills, and such other calamities which have been pushing the coral
reefs towards extinction, reported The Washington Post.

A decade-long study of remote islands in the Central Pacific has
indicated that these coral reefs might survive despite threats posed by
global warming brought on by climate change and warming of the oceans
due to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide introduced by burning of
fossil fuels.

In a large scale study covering 56 islands, researchers studied 450
locations that were once teeming with coral reefs. Researchers looked at
regions spanning from Hawaii to American Samoa. They even investigated
locations in the remote Line and Phoenix Islands as well as the Mariana
Archipelago. To their surprise, they realized there are quite a few
locations where coral reefs have defied the odds and bounced back to
life. Smith’s report was published recently in the journal Proceedings
of the Royal Society B.

The researchers wanted to investigate the impact of climate change as
well as a 1998 El Nino event that led to widespread bleaching. Since
1998, coral reefs had been increasingly banishing the symbiotic algae
that gave them their brilliant colors and welcoming seaweed, which
encroaches on the real estate once occupied by the corals. Study leader
Jennifer Smith, a professor at Scripps’ Center for Marine Biodiversity
and Conservation said the following.

“After a bleaching event, it really matters what
happens to all those dead skeletons. Do they get colonized by big
seaweeds, or do they get covered by coralline algae, which are providing
settlements for baby corals and providing an environment that
facilitates recovery.”

Majority of the reefs that have shown signs of regaining their structure
are located near far-flung islands. They are significantly healthier as
compared to the reefs near islands that are heavily populated and
frequented by humans. In other words, human influence, coupled with
coral reef bleaching event — fueled in part by El Niño-driven Ocean
warming — has had its detrimental effect on the delicate undersea
ecosystem. Such was the impact and scientists had painted a very gloomy
picture stating up to 70 percent of coral reefs would vanish before
2050.

It now appears the fear that these reefs were on their way to
extinction, has been largely alleviated. The coral reefs that have
clearly bounced back strongly indicate that such features won’t fade
from existence in the coming decades, as previously feared. Speaking
about the discovery of such healthy coral reefs, Smith explained its
significance for the researchers.

“There are still coral reefs on this planet that are
incredibly healthy and probably look the way they did 1,000 years ago.
The scientists were practically in tears when we saw some of these
reefs. We’ve never experienced anything like it in our lives. It was an
almost religious experience.”

Smith seems justifiably euphoric because just like environmental
science, coral-reef researchers have been dealing with dying and
degraded ecosystems, which can be a traumatic and rather depressing
experience. However, the sight that greeted the researchers is certainly
a breath of fresh air, continued Smith.

“It’s hard to fathom. I would jump into the water and
there would be so much coral, so many different species of fish, so
much complexity and color. I would find myself underwater, shaking my
head, looking around in disbelief that these places still existed.”

Though coral reefs occupy less than 0.1 percent of the ocean floor, they
shelter close to 25 percent of all marine species, reports Los Angeles
Times. Besides helping oceanic life, coral reefs also offer food,
tourism and flood protection to human settlements along the coastline.

A recent survey conducted by George Mason University of more than 4,000
American Meteorological Society (AMS) members found about one-third of
them don’t agree with the so-called global warming “consensus” that
humans are the cause of most recent warming.

The GMU survey of AMS members found “14% think the change is caused more
or less equally by human activity and natural events; and 7% think the
change is caused mostly by natural events.”

“Conversely, 5% think the change is caused largely or entirely by
natural events, 6% say they don’t know, and 1% think climate change
isn’t happening,” according to the GMU poll.

“Fully 33% either believe climate change is not occurring, is mostly
natural, or is at most half-natural and half-manmade (I tend toward that
last category) … or simply think we ‘don’t know,’”

Dr. Roy Spencer a climate scientist who compiles satellite-derived
temperature data at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, wrote in
his blog. “For something that is supposed to be ‘settled science’, I
find that rather remarkable,” wrote Spencer, who is a prominent skeptic
of claims of catastrophic man-made global warming.

GMU found that 29 percent of AMS members thought global warming was
“largely or entirely” caused by humans and another 38 percent believe
warming is “mostly” due to humans. It should be noted, however, only 37
percent of AMS respondents considered themselves climate “experts.”

“But what I find interesting is that the supposed 97% consensus on
climate change (which we know is bogus anyway) turns into only 67% when
we consider the number of people who believe climate change is mostly or
entirely caused by humans,” Spencer wrote.

Spencer is referring to claims from politicians and environmentalists
that 97 percent of climate scientists think humans are causing global
warming.

“Ninety-seven percent of scientists, including, by the way, some who
originally disputed the data, have now put that to rest,” President
Barack Obama said in 2013. “They’ve acknowledged the planet is warming
and human activity is contributing to it.”

The 97 percent figure has largely been cited by activists looking to
squash public debates about climate science. The figure is based on a
now debunked study 2013 study by Australian researcher John Cook.

“Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the
consensus on [anthropogenic global warming] is a vanishingly small
proportion of the published research,’’ Cook and his fellow authors
wrote in their study which was published in the journal Environmental
Research Letters.

But the definition Cook used to get his consensus was over-simplified.
Only 41 out of the 11,944 published climate studies examined by Cook
explicitly stated that mankind caused most of the warming since 1950 —
meaning the actual consensus is 0.3 percent.

“It is astonishing that any journal could have published a paper
claiming a 97% climate consensus when on the authors’ own analysis the
true consensus was well below 1%,” Dr. David Legates, a geology
professor at the University of Delaware, said about a study he and four
other prominent researchers authored debunking Cook’s consensus claim.

The new AMS survey, however, does show that most of the science group’s
members believe global warming “is happening,” according to the GMU
poll. The disagreement, however, is over what is the driving force
behind global warming: is it mostly caused by humans or mostly due to
natural variability?

The efforts of President Barack Obama and other world leaders to prevent
global warming will almost certainly fail, according to a new study
published recently by Texas A&M scientists.

“It would require rates of change in our energy infrastructure and
energy mix that have never happened in world history and that are
extremely unlikely to be achieved,” Glenn Jones, a professor of marine
sciences at Texas A&M who co-authored the study, said in a Wednesday
statement on Science Daily. “For a world that wants to fight climate
change, the numbers just don’t add up to do it.”

The study modeled the projected population growth and per capita energy
consumption, as well as the size of known reserves of oil, coal and
natural gas, and greenhouse gas emissions. It determined that it would
be essentially impossible to meet the global warming goal of 2 degree
Celsius by 2100 set by the December Paris agreement.

“The latest study just adds to what everyone other than those with their
heads in the clouds already knows: the combination of a growing demand
for energy and a growing population will lead to continued growth in the
most practical form of energy production—one reliant on fossil fuels,”
Chip Knappenberger, a climate scientist at the libertarian Cato
Institute, told The Daily Caller Caller News Foundation. “Unless a
technological breakthrough in non-carbon emitting energy production
occurs in the very near future, the global production of energy and the
global emissions of carbon dioxide will stay pretty tightly coupled for
the remainder of the century.

Significant reductions to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are extremely
difficult to achieve due to the immense costs involved according to the
scientists. They estimate that simply limiting global warming to the
Paris agreement targets would require the annual installation of 485,000
wind turbines by 2028. Only 13,000 turbines were installed in 2015,
despite the enormous tax breaks and subsidies offered to wind power.

“The costs of reducing emissions are enormous, while the reductions in
atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are non-existent,” Myron
Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the free
market Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Caller News
Foundation. “It is nice to see scientists in the alarmist community
realizing what has been obvious for decades.”

The likely costs of the kind of wind and solar power program the
scientists say would be necessary to actually slow global warming would
be measured in the tens of trillions of dollars, and even then success
would be far from assured. The scientists conclude that other methods of
reducing CO2 emissions, such as significantly increasing the number of
nuclear reactors, would run into political opposition from environmental
groups.

“Current efforts, like US EPA regulations or the UN’s Paris Agreement
may chip away at the tightness of the gross world product/global CO2
emissions relationship but, they probably won’t be successful in
breaking it so long as they are relying on current technologies (with
perhaps the exception of a rapid build-out of nuclear power
plants—something that doesn’t seem to be in the cards),” Knappenberger
concluded.

The study’s conclusions are mirrored by Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy comments during a Tuesday hearing that
the Clean Power Plan (CPP), her agency’s signature regulation aimed at
tackling global warming, was meant to show “leadership” rather than
actually prevent projected warming.

EPA repeatedly has long argued the point of the Clean Power Plan was to
show the world America was serious about tackling global warming in
order to galvanize support for United Nations delegates to sign a global
agreement to cut emissions. Nearly 200 countries agreed to a U.N. deal
last year.

Shades of "Smart Growth" in Australia: Busybodies want to limit other people's choices in apartment sizes

A small, low-cost inner-city "pied-à-terre" might be just what is
needed for someone who works in the city during the week but who spends
the weekend at a pleasant rural property. Many men work away from
their families during the week. My father did

THEY’VE been labelled “crappy” and “dog boxes in the sky”, apartments so
small and badly designed there’s barely enough room to swing a cat —
let alone a pooch.

There’s no space for luxuries like, you know, a dining room table, while some rooms don’t even sport windows.

The tiniest units in Australian cities are so small they would be illegal in crowded Hong Kong and New York.

But far from being spurned, compact flats are being heralded by some as the solution to the growing demand for city living.

However, there are moves afoot to clamp down on so-called “micro
apartments” with calls for a minimum size for flats to stop developers
squeezing more people into ever smaller spaces.

Earlier this month, Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle criticised developers who were sacrificing design for density.

“I am pro-development but some of the developments that have been put
before us are shameful”, he told the Urban Development Institute in
Adelaide.

Talking to news.com.au he reeled off a list of developer requests he was
outraged by, including windows separated from the rooms they were
supposed to illuminate by a corridor so long it was “like something out
of Alice in Wonderland”, glass walls whose role it was to filter light
into windowless bedrooms but actually created “little caves”, and fridge
doors that couldn’t open because of the cramped space.

There was even the builder who created a micro apartment without a
kitchen with the reason that it would be ideal for someone who enjoyed
eating out.

A critic of unchecked development, Mr Doyle said good design needed to
be at the centre of new apartments to prevent “building the slums of
tomorrow”.

Yet, for 24-year-old public relations consultant Elena Eckhardt, her
tiny Sydney apartment, which she shares with her partner, is a bijou
beauty.

“The apartment has a double bedroom, bathroom, laundry, joint kitchen and living room and balcony,” she told news.com.au.

“Despite it being so small I’ve decorated it so it feels very personal.”

At 48sq m her flat is skirting the regulations in NSW, known as SEPP 65,
that set a minimum apartment size. One bedroom units can be no smaller
than 50sq m but studio apartments can go down to a super snug 35sq m.

Ms Eckhardt’s bedroom is partially separate with openings in the wall
letting some natural light “borrowed” from the living room which has
large windows.

“It’s the smallest place I’ve lived,” she said of the unit in the city
fringe suburb of Chippendale. “We wouldn’t be able to afford a big
apartment in the CBD so I do definitely like being here at this stage in
our lives.”

Ms Eckhardt said she could walk to work and any number of pubs and shops
were in the local area. The couple are out most nights, so see the flat
as less a place to linger and more somewhere to bed down in.

Nevertheless, they’ve had to make compromises. “We decided not to have a
kitchen table because it’s too cluttered so we only have a table on the
balcony and eat there or on the couch”.

“But having a separate bedroom was really important because there is two of us so it doesn’t feel like we’re sharing one room.”

Ms Eckhardt’s 48sq m are an indulgence of open space compared to an
apartment advertised for rent in Melbourne CBD that was just 20sq m, or
roughly the size of two car parking spots, the Age reported.

In Victoria, unlike NSW, there is no minimum apartment size. In the
Victorian Government’s ‘Better Apartments’ consultation, Planning
Minister Richard Wynne raised the prospect of a new apartment code which
could see minimum sizes alongside a raft of other measures around
natural light, noise and outdoor space.

The consultation found daylight and space were the top concerns for
apartment dwellers with 76 per cent of respondents calling for a minimum
apartment size.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

27 March, 2016

The BPA scare again

This has been rumbling on for decades now. It's part of the
aversion some people have for "chemicals". That all foods are full
of chemicals just cannot get into certain heads. BPA is used to
make sturdy, clear plastic, as in babies' bottles. It is very
weakly soluble in water and has estrogen-like effects in the human
body. So you can imagine all the twitching over that.

What
the twitchy ones are probably incapable of recognizing is the old truth
that the toxicity is in the dose. Depending on the amount
absorbed, a thing can be good for you, bad for you or neither.
Even drinking too much water can kill you, for instance. It can
bring on hyponatremia. And the low levels (typically only a few
molecules) of BPA found in food and drink kept in BPA containers has
repeatedly been found by all sorts of research and official enquiries to
be harmless

But every now and again you get some finding that gives encouragement to the paranoid ones. One such is below

And given those very marginal findings, we may well be
looking here at one of the many unreplicable findings that infest the
social and biological research literature. Such weak effects are
exactly those which do normally fail to replicate. And an
unreplicable finding is a non-finding

A chemical commonly found in plastic wrapping is linked to preterm
births, scientists have warned. Preterm birth occurs when an infant is
born before 37 weeks of pregnancy.

It is the greatest contributor to infant death – and one of the leading
causes of long-term neurological disabilities in children, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pregnant women with high concentrations of the chemical Bisphenol A – or
BPA – are more likely to deliver their babies early, revealed experts
from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

Study author Dr Ramkumar Menon said: ‘Women are continuously exposed to
BPA because it's used in the construction and coatings of food
containers and its release into food is increased by microwave or other
heat sources. ‘In fact, BPA is so widely used that nearly all
women have some level of exposure.’

For the study, Texas scientists analysed blood samples from pregnant women admitted to the hospital for labor and delivery.

They also tested the amniotic fluid of the fetus collected during labor.
They found that pregnant women with higher levels of BPA in their blood
had a higher chance of delivering a baby preterm.

The samples were obtained by the Nashville Birth Cohort Biobank,
according to the study, which was published in The Journal of
Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine.

BPA is structurally similar to the female hormone estrogen. The chemical
binds estrogen receptors within the body – including those responsible
for inflammation.

The study was the first to investigate the role of BPA levels on preterm birth.

Leftism sure messes up minds. A small excerpt below. An
apparently normal woman hesitated for years before getting pregnant
because of all the doom that Warmists predict. She apparently had
no natural skepticism so didn't think to doubt the predictions. So
she felt she did not want to bring kids into a world plagued by natural
disasters. And, by the time she allowed her natural instincts to
take over, it was pretty late and all she has had so far is a
miscarriage.

The article below is very long. She obviously
wrote it to soothe her feelings. But on the whole I support the
decisions of fruitcake women not to have children. It means that
those like them will tend to die out. It's called natural selection

By Madeline Ostrander

The librarian was nondescript in the way that everyone standing behind a
counter is, probably in her 30s, with straight, fox-colored hair. When
she took my stack of books, I noticed the way her sweater draped over a
conspicuous melon-shaped belly, and I felt a tug in my chest and warmth
rise in my stomach. It took a moment to recognize this sensation as
envy. Then came another feeling: shock. I had never been jealous of any
woman for carrying what looked like an uncomfortable load, or for what
would come next: the messy, exhausting job of mothering an infant.
Something unfamiliar had come over me.

In my late 20s and early 30s, I was terrified of becoming the sort of
woman who was “baby crazy,” afraid motherhood would circumscribe my
life. I politely admired but didn’t gush over my friends’ new babies.
Compared with many women, I was under little pressure to procreate;
neither my nor my husband’s parents had ever expressed more than a
tentative longing for grandchildren. But six years ago, when I first
held my 2-month-old niece, wrapped in a flower-print onesie and
murmuring delicious baby noises, I felt a rush of joy, an indescribable
feeling of human closeness.

My husband and I had made a home in Seattle for several years, and my
friends of childbearing age tended to be writers and activists,
scientists and scholars. When considering kids, they weighed not only
their desires and finances but the state of the world. Many of them had
read grim prognoses of what climate change would do to life on Earth.
Even in the restrained language of science, the future holds
unprecedented difficulties and disasters. For many people, these
problems were an abstraction, but as an environmental journalist, I knew
enough to imagine them in front of me. Driving across the bridge to my
house, I pictured city beaches drowned by the rising sea. Watching the
news, I wondered when the next colossal hurricane would strike the Gulf
of Mexico or the mid-Atlantic. These thoughts are not paranoid.
According to scientists’ predictions, if society keeps pumping out
carbon dioxide at current rates, any child born now could, by midlife,
watch Superstorm Sandy–size disasters regularly inundate New York City.
She could see the wheat fields of the Great Plains turn to dust and
parts of California gripped by decades of drought. She may see world
food prices soar and water in the American West become even scarcer. By
2050, when still in her 30s, she could witness global wars waged over
food and land. “It does make me wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have kids,”
one of my friends whispered to me.

The post below from 2013 should be a good antidote to claims that
Arctic ice has recently shrunk a little. Sometimes it shrinks;
Sometimes it grows

Earth has gained 19,000 Manhattans of sea ice since this date last year,
the largest increase on record. There is more sea ice now than there
was in mid-September 1990. Al Gore, call your office.

A 2007 prediction that summer in the North Pole could be “ice-free by
2013” that was cited by former Vice President Al Gore in his Nobel Peace
Prize acceptance speech has proven to be off . .. by 920,000 square
miles. But then Democrats have never been good at math — or climate
science.

In his Dec. 10, 2007, “Earth has a fever” speech, Gore referred to a
prediction by U.S. climate scientist Wieslaw Maslowski that the Arctic’s
summer ice could “completely disappear” by 2013 due to global warming
caused by carbon emissions as the seas rose to swallow up places like
the island of Manhattan.

The inconvenient truth is that planet Earth now has the equivalent of
330,000 Manhattans of Arctic ice, Steve Goddard notes in the blog Real
Science. Even before the annual autumn re-freeze was scheduled to begin,
he says, NASA satellite images showed an unbroken ice sheet more than
half the size of Europe already stretched from the Canadian islands to
Russia’s northern shores. No polar bears were seen drowning.

As the Daily Mail reports, “A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a
million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same
time last year — an increase of 60%.” The much-touted Northwest Passage
from the Atlantic to the Pacific froze up and has remained blocked by
pack ice all year. More than 20 yachts that had planned to sail it have
been left ice-bound and a cruise ship attempting the route was forced to
turn back.

This is a far cry from those iconic pictures, taken at a low point one
particularly balmy Arctic summer, of polar bears clinging to slivers of
pack ice lest they drown. The bears, who can swim up to 200 miles, and
whose numbers are increasing, are doing fine, much better than a U.S.
economy under assault by a needless war on fossil fuels, particularly
coal, all in a futile effort to head off nonexistent climate change.

This summer was supposed to bring an ice-free Arctic with not so much as
an ice cube for Santa to land on. Oh, and the Himalayan glaciers were
supposed to disappear, according to computer models that have so far
been unable to forecast either the past or the weather for the weekend
barbecue.

“We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the
next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and
1990s has stopped,” Professor Anastasios Tsonis of the University of
Wisconsin told the Daily Mail.

A recent study by German researchers Hans von Storch, Armineh
Barkhordarian, Klaus Hasselmann and Eduardo Zorita of the Institute for
Coastal Research and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology found that
claims of all 65 climate-model computers used by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to predict the future impact of carbon
dioxide on climate had failed to foresee this lack of temperature rise.

Climate is affected by an infinite number of variables. Their relative
importance and the complexity of their interactions are not fully
understood. Put too much weight on one and not enough on the other, and
you have the computer phenomenon known as GIGO — garbage in, garbage
out.

U.S. climate expert Judith Curry suggests computer models place too much
emphasis on current CO2 levels and not enough on long-term cycles in
ocean temperature that have a huge influence on climate and suggest we
may be approaching a period similar to 1965 to 1975, when there was a
clear cooling trend.

Warm-mongers such as Gore still say it’s a question of when and not if.
They may be walking on thin ice, but the polar bears are not.

According to recently published scientific papers, the current sea level
highstand, as well as the rate of glacier retreat and sea level change,
are now significantly lower than they have been for much of the last
10,000 years — back when CO2 concentrations were stable and considerably
lower (at about 265 ppm).

The most recent IPCC report (2013) indicates that sea levels have been
rising at a rate of 1.7 mm/year, or 6.7 inches per century, since 1901
(through 2010). This rate occurred synchronously with an approx.
100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 levels.

In contrast, scientists Hodgson et al., 2016 have determined that sea
levels rose at rates of 1.2 to 4.8 meters per century (47 to 188 inches,
or about 4 to 16 feet per century) between about 10,500 and 9,500 years
ago near East Antarctica. This sea level rate change occurred
while CO2 levels were stable to modestly declining *.

In the paper: Rapid early Holocene sea-level rise in Prydz Bay, East Antarctica, the authors write:

"Prydz Bay is one of the largest embayments on the East Antarctic coast
and it is the discharge point for approximately 16% of the East
Antarctic Ice Sheet. […] The field data show rapid increases in rates of
relative sea level rise of 12–48 mm/yr between 10,473 (or 9678) and
9411 cal yr BP [calendar years before present].”

The recently published scientific literature also indicates that not
only was the historical rate of sea level rise significantly higher than
it has been since the 20th century began, glaciers and ice sheets
continued to rapidly retreat during the late Holocene, or within the
last few thousand years. During the Medieval Warm Period, for
example, scientists Guglielmin et al., 2016 determined that glacier
retreat rates in the Western Antarctic Peninsula were as high or higher
than they have been in recent decades.

In the publication here, the authors write:

"Here, we present evidence for glacial retreat corresponding to the MWP
[Medieval Warm Period] and a subsequent LIA [Little Ice Age] advance at
Rothera Point (67°34?S; 68°07?W) in Marguerite Bay, western Antarctic
Peninsula. … Based on new radiocarbon dates, during the MWP, the rate of
glacier retreat was 1.6?m?yr?1, which is comparable with recently
observed rates (~0.6?m per year between 1993 and 2011 and 1.4?m per year
between 2005 and 2011).”

Prior to the Medieval Warm Period, scientists Yokoyama et al., 2016
indicate that “the world’s largest ice shelf” collapsed due to a warming
ocean and atmosphere, with ice shelf retreat rates of 100 km within a
thousand years.

In the publication Widespread collapse of the Ross Ice Shelf during the late Holocene, the authors write:

"The Ross Sea is a major drainage basin for the Antarctic Ice Sheet and
contains the world’s largest ice shelf. … Breakup initiated around 5 ka
[5,000 years ago], with the ice shelf reaching its current configuration
?1.5 ka [1,500 years ago]. In the eastern Ross Sea, the ice shelf
retreated up to 100 km in about a thousand years. … [I]ce-shelf breakup
resulted from combined atmospheric warming and warm ocean currents
impinging onto the continental shelf.”

According to other scientists Bradley et al., 2016, the melt water from
the Antarctic ice sheet continued to contribute up to 5.8 meters of sea
level rise equivalent until about 1,000 years ago.

In another recent paper here the authors found:

"…a slowdown in melting at ?7 kyr BP associated with the final
deglaciation of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, followed by a continued rise
in ESL [Holocene ice volume equivalent sea level] until ?1 kyr BP of
?5.8 m associated with melting from the Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

Due apparently to the high glacier-melt rates and warmer ocean
temperatures (Rosenthal et al. [2013]** indicate that 0-700 m Pacific
Ocean temperatures were still ~0.65° C warmer than present ~1,000 years
ago), recently published scientific papers document that sea levels
stood from 1 to 4 meters higher than now as recently as a few thousand
years ago (see citations below).

The big mystery

These scientific conclusions beg the question: If CO2 is a primary
determinant of changes in sea level, why is it that sea level highstands
(and sea level rise and glacier melt rates) were significantly greater
when CO2 concentrations were stable and low than they have been in
recent decades?

Publications to read:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969715311700

The configuration suggests surface inundation of the upper sediments by
marine water during the mid-Holocene (c. 2–8 kyr BP) [2,000-8,000 years
before present], when sea level was 1–2 m above today’s level.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589415000642

"….a [sea level] highstand at ~ 5000–3500 cal yr BP. The berms [raised
land embankments] are presently at ~ + 6 m above [present] sea level,
2–3 m above the beach ridges. Human settlements were common on the ridge
crests before and after the highstand. Regression to present-day sea
level commenced after the highstand, which is when the sabkha began
forming.”

We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic
intermediate waters were warmer by 2.1 ± 0.4°C and 1.5 ± 0.4°C,
respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum than over the
past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval
Warm period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in
recent decades.”

Some in Washington want to unleash government to harass heretics who don’t accept the ‘consensus.’

Galileo Galilei was tried in 1633 for spreading the heretical view that
the Earth orbits the sun, convicted by the Roman Catholic Inquisition,
and remained under house arrest until his death. Today’s inquisitors
seek their quarry’s imprisonment and financial ruin. As the scientific
case for a climate-change catastrophe wanes, proponents of big-ticket
climate policies are increasingly focused on punishing dissent from an
asserted “consensus” view that the only way to address global warming is
to restructure society—how it harnesses and uses energy. That we might
muddle through a couple degrees’ of global warming over decades or even
centuries, without any major disruption, is the new heresy and must be
suppressed.

The Climate Inquisition began with Michael Mann’s 2012 lawsuit against
critics of his “hockey stick” research—a holy text to climate alarmists.
The suggestion that Prof. Mann’s famous diagram showing rapid recent
warming was an artifact of his statistical methods, rather than an
accurate representation of historical reality, was too much for the Penn
State climatologist and his acolytes to bear.

Among their targets (and our client in his lawsuit) was the Competitive
Enterprise Institute, a think tank prominent for its skeptical viewpoint
in climate-policy debates. Mr. Mann’s lawsuit seeks to put it, along
with National Review magazine, out of business. Four years on, the
courts are still pondering the First Amendment values at stake. In the
meantime, the lawsuit has had its intended effect, fostering legal
uncertainty that chills speech challenging the “consensus” view.

Mr. Mann’s lawsuit divided climate scientists—many of whom recognized
that it threatened vital scientific debate—but the climate Inquisition
was only getting started. The past year has witnessed even more
heavy-handed attempts to enforce alarmist doctrine and stamp out
dissent.

Assuming the mantle of Grand Inquisitor is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D.,
R.I.). Last spring he called on the Justice Department to bring charges
against those behind a “coordinated strategy” to spread heterodox views
on global warming, including the energy industry, trade associations,
“conservative policy institutes” and scientists. Mr. Whitehouse, a
former prosecutor, identified as a legal basis for charges that the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, the federal
statute enacted to take down mafia organizations and drug cartels.

In September a group of 20 climate scientists wrote to President Obama
and Attorney General Loretta Lynch encouraging them to heed Mr.
Whitehouse and launch a RICO investigation targeting climate skeptics.
This was necessary since, they claimed, America’s policy response to
climate change was currently “insufficient,” because of dissenting views
regarding the risks of climate change. Email correspondence
subsequently obtained through public-records requests revealed that this
letter was also coordinated by Mr. Whitehouse.

Reps. Ted Lieu (D., Calif.) and Mark DeSaulnier (D., Calif.) followed up
with a formal request for the Justice Department to launch an
investigation, specifically targeting Exxon Mobil for its funding of
climate research and policy organizations skeptical of extreme warming
claims. Attorney General Lynch announced in testimony this month that
the matter had been referred to the FBI “to consider whether or not it
meets the criteria for what we could take action on.” Similar
investigations are already spearheaded by state attorneys general in
California and New York.

Meanwhile, Mr. Whitehouse, joined by Sens. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) and
Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), sent letters to a hundred
organizations—from private companies to policy institutes—demanding that
they turn over information about funding and research relating to
climate issues. In his response to the senators, Cato Institute
President John Allison called the effort “an obvious attempt to chill
research into and funding of public policy projects you don’t like.”

Intimidation is the point of these efforts. Individual scientists, think
tanks and private businesses are no match for the vast powers that
government officials determined to stifle dissent are able to wield. An
onslaught of investigations—with the risk of lawsuits, prosecution and
punishment—is more than most can afford to bear. As a practical reality,
defending First Amendment rights in these circumstances requires the
resources to take on the government and win—no matter the cost or how
long it takes.

It also requires taking on the Climate Inquisition directly. Spurious
government investigations, driven by the desire to suppress a particular
viewpoint, constitute illegal retaliation against protected speech and,
as such, can be checked by the courts, with money damages potentially
available against the federal and state perpetrators. If anyone is going
to be intimidated, it should be officials who are willing to abuse
their powers to target speech with which they disagree.

That is why we are establishing the Free Speech in Science Project to
defend the kind of open inquiry and debate that are central to
scientific advancement and understanding. The project will fund legal
advice and defense to those who need it, while executing an offense to
turn the tables on abusive officials. Scientists, policy organizations
and others should not have to fear that they will be the next victims of
the Climate Inquisition—that they may face punishment and personal ruin
for engaging in research and advocating their views.

The principle of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court recognized in
Dennis v. United States (1951), is that “speech can rebut speech,
propaganda will answer propaganda, free debate of ideas will result in
the wisest governmental policies.” For that principle to prevail —in
something less than the 350 years it took for the Catholic Church to
acknowledge its mistake in persecuting Galileo— the inquisition of those
breaking from the climate “consensus” must be stopped.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

25 March, 2016

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick (?@sarahinscience) makes a brave attempt to prove that February heat was caused by CO2

There she is. Isn't she gorgeous? She looks fairly young
-- which may be why she has stepped in where wiser heads have not.
She works in the climate change department of an Australian
university. There's good gravy in global warming for some.

Old
campaigners like James Hansen and Michael Mann have claimed the
February temperature uptick as a sign of anthropogenic global
warming. They admit that El Nino had something to do with it but
just dismiss the El Nino contribution as "minimal" with a wave of the
hand. They don't argue for a particular number, as a real
scientist would.

But Sarah has risen to the challenge. She
has attempted to give a figure for the El Nino influence! And the
way she does that is fine in principle. She takes the rise due to
El Nino in 1998 and uses that to reduce the 2016 figure. So she
gives a quarter of one degree as the El Nino contribution -- which still
leaves a fair bit of warming available for explanation as caused by a
CO2 rise.

Just how your derive the 1998 figure for the influence
of El Nino is not totally clearcut. It depends on what you compare
the 1998 figure with. But I will not cavil about that. I
just want to point out the observed warming COULD NOT have been caused
by a CO2 rise. Why? Because CO2 did not rise in the relevant
period. Cape Grim shows CO2 levels stuck on 398 ppm for the whole
period of late 2015 and early 2016. Sorry, Sarah! You
should have looked that up.

Now it may not be El Nino only that
caused the temperature rise. There are other possible natural
factors that could have had an effect. And Sarah points to one:
The Arctic. She is enough of a scientist to know that melting sea
ice does not raise the water level but she points out that less ice may
lead to more heat absorption from the sun. Fair enough.

But
what caused the Arctic melt? In the absence of a CO2 rise we know
it cannot be that. It was partly El Nino and partly subsurface
vulcanism, probably. A few years back it was discovered that
there was furious underwater volcanic activity in the Arctic,
particularly along the Gakkel ridge. But volcanoes are uneven in
their eruptions so they should give rise in random ways to melting in
the ice above them. And that accounts for the uneven pattern of
Arctic melting and its lack of synchrony with temperatures
elsewhere. But Warmists act as if the volcanoes cause NO
melting. They need to be that crooked.

And here's some other pesky news 2015 was only the SECOND hottest year on record for Europe.
They must not have got much effect from El Nino -- which is as you
expect. Europe is a long way from the Pacific, where El Nino
reigns. Give up, Sarah! What you have been taught is
WRONG. You are living off a lie!

Most people know by now that last month was the hottest February since
modern records began. It was also the hottest overall month on record,
and by the largest margin.

The global average temperature anomaly was 1.35ºC above the 1951–80
average and 1.21ºC above the entire twentieth-century average. For
temperatures over land, the deviation almost doubles to a whopping
2.31ºC above the twentieth-century average. Other records broken by
February 2016 include the fact that it was the tenth consecutive month
in which the global average monthly record was broken and that it
completed the hottest three-month period on record (December 2015 to
February 2016).

Normally, climate scientists don’t get too anxious over a single month;
our blood pressure tends to rise a bit more when record-breaking
temperature anomalies are consistently smashed. But February is a
special case – not only did it set a new record in an increasingly
concerning upwards trend, but the magnitude of the record is terrifying.

So what led to this monster of a month?

First, let’s take a look at the possible influence of the El
Niño/Southern Oscillation. The 2015–16 El Niño was one of the earliest
and strongest on record, easily comparable to its brother in 1997–98. At
the global level, El Niños can cause measurable increases in
temperature. We saw this in 1998, in our hottest year on record at the
time: thanks to climate change, 1998 would have been a warm year without
the El Niño, but the record set would have been smaller.

While the latest El Niño is weakening, its legacy is likely to have had a
similar effect on our most recent hottest year on record (2015) and the
monster February – increasing the anomaly by just a little bit more
than what climate change could achieve on its on. But there is no
possible way that an observed El Niño, however strong, could solely
explain such a huge monthly temperature deviation. Past El Niños have
only intensified global average temperatures by up to 0.25ºC, though the
measured influence is usually smaller.

The second factor is the state of the Arctic, where the sea ice extent
was more than 7 per cent below the 1981–2010 average, and the ice
coverage the smallest since records began in 1979. Over relatively short
timescales (monthly-seasonal) a lack of sea ice drives up temperatures.
Ocean water is much darker than ice, so radiation from the sun that is
normally reflected by the sea ice is absorbed, thus increasing
temperatures.

Over longer timescales (years and decades), this sea ice/temperature
interaction drives itself – increasing temperatures melt more ice,
driving further increases in temperature – through a process known as a
positive feedback. Record-low Arctic sea ice during February 2016 and
the associated extreme temperatures are consistent with the positive
feedback interaction triggered by anthropogenic climate change.

This basic physical interaction drove regional temperatures to well over
11.5ºC warmer than the 1951–80 average. These alarmingly warm
conditions were not just confined to the Arctic waters. Because of the
influence of sea ice (or the lack of it) on atmospheric circulation,
similar temperature extremes were measured well south of the Arctic
Circle – over Northern Europe, Russia, Alaska and western Canada.

Warmists have made much of the low levels of Arctic ice last
February. And within the years examined, it WAS low. But HOW low
was it? Not much lower than several previous years. The
graph below helps to show how close the various years have been to one
another

The extent seen in February 2016 was 14.22 million sq km. This is
definitely below the 1981- 2010 average by 1.16 million sq km, but only
200,000 sq km below the previous low for that month which was set in
2005.

This means that another headline for the same story could have been that
this February’s ice extent is essentially the same as it was a decade
ago!

Analysis Finds No Correlation Between Glacier Melt And CO2, Melting Much Slower Today Than 1930s!

According to the below graph (Fig. 2 a) found in Gregory et al., 2013 in
Journal of Climate (“Twentieth-Century Global-Mean Sea Level Rise: Is
the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts?”), there was a very
substantial increase in the glacier and ice sheet melt contribution to
sea level rise in the early 20th century, reaching up to 2 mm/year sea
level rise equivalent.

In recent years, the documented rise in sea levels contributed from
glacier and ice sheet melt has not come close to reaching the high
levels attained during the 1920s and 1930s period as documented by
Gregory et al., 2013.

For example according to Shepherd et al., 2012 (see below), the total
ice sheet melt contribution from the Antarctic (AIS) and Greenland (GIS)
ice sheets combined was 0.59 mm/year (~2.3 inches per century) during
the 1992-2011 period and the total ice sheet or glacier melt from all
other land sources (not the AIS or GIS) was 0.41 mm/year (~1.6 inches
per century) for 2003 to 2010 according to Jacob et al., 2012 (see
below).

Together, the total melt contribution from global land ice was about 1
mm/year (~4 inches per century) through the first decade of the 21st
century, which is still well below the melt rates achieved during the
1920s and 1930s.

Interestingly, during the 1920s to 1930s period of very high glacier
melt rate contributions to sea level rise, human CO2 emissions were flat
and only averaged about 1 GtC/year (see graph below).

In contrast, during the 1990s to 2010/2011 period, CO2 emissions rates reached 6 to 9 GtC/year.

Unanswered question

If anthropogenic CO2 emissions are truly driving ice sheet and glacier
melt contributions to sea level rise, why was the melt contribution
significantly higher during the 1920s and 1930s when CO2 emissions rates
were flat and about 1/6th to 1/9th of what they’ve been in recent
years?

Mean global total ozone is estimated as the latitudinally weighed
average of total ozone measured by the TOMS and OMI satellite mounted
ozone measurement devices for the periods 1979-1992 and 2005-2015
respectively. The TOMS dataset shows ozone depletion at a rate of 0.62
DU per year on average from 1979 to 1992. The OMI dataset shows ozone
accretion at a rate of 0.48 DU per year on average from 2005 to 2015.
The conflicting and inconsequential OLS trends may be explained in terms
of the random variability of nature and the Hurst phenomenon. These
findings are inconsistent with the Rowland-Molina theory of ozone
destruction by anthropogenic chemical agents because the theory implies
continued and dangerous depletion of total ozone on a global scale until
the year 2040.

Ho Hum! This old chestnut again. Israel has basically a
desert climate but it is now a water superpower. It has ample
water. And no miracle about it. They just used existing technology
intelligently. The whole world could do the same.

And the
galoots below are overlooking the obvious. Global warming would
evaporate more water off the oceans, which would come down as increased
rainfall. Do they believe in global warming or not?

An estimated three out of four jobs globally are dependent on water,
meaning that shortages and lack of access are likely to limit economic
growth in the coming decades, the United Nations said.

"There is a direct effect on jobs worldwide if there are disruptions in
water supply through natural causes, such as droughts, or if water
doesn't get to communities because of infrastructure problems," said
Richard Connor, the report's editor-in-chief.

Demand for water is expected to increase by 2050 as the world's
population is forecast to grow by one-third to more than 9 billion,
according to the United Nations.

This in turn will lead to a 70 percent increase in demand for food,
putting more pressure on water through farming, which is already the
biggest consumer of water.

As climate change contributes to rising sea levels and extreme weather,
at least one in four people will live in a country with chronic or
recurring shortages of fresh water by 2050, the United Nations
estimates, making it more important to focus on expanding rainwater
harvesting and recycling wastewater.

Connor said funding for projects was still often based on "investment in
pumps and pipes" rather than a more holistic view, taking into account
water's key role in building a sustainable economy as part of the new
global development goals.

More investment in renewable energy such as solar and wind, which use
very little water, is also crucial in reducing demand for water, Connor
said.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced last week the cancellation
of a long-standing oil and gas exploration lease on federal land in
Montana.

Louisiana-based Solenex LLC has held the lease since the early 1980s in a
remote area of Montana’s Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest, where
oil and gas leasing has since been banned by the federal government.

The Department of the Interior (DOI), of which BLM is a part, said in a
March 17 press release that it has the authority to cancel leases.

“In 1982, absent of tribal consultation and a thorough review of
environmental and cultural studies, the U.S Forest Service granted 47
oil and gas permit leases in and around the Badger-Two Medicine area,” a
press release issued on March 17 stated.

“For over two decades the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and many non-Native
conservation and historical preservation groups have sought the
cancellation of these permit leases,” it stated.

“While a number of these leases were subsequently cancelled through
Congressional action and other measures, the Blackfeet Tribe has sought
the cancellation of the remaining leases that would cause irreparable
damage to Badger-Two Medicine,” BLM added.

But critics of the cancellation said the unilateral move by a federal agency puts all such leases at risk.

"It's a sad day in the United States when a government agency can
unilaterally cancel a paid mineral lease especially after numerous
approved exploration permits had previously been issued,” Alan Olson,
executive director of the Montana Petroleum Association, said in a March
17 statement. “The current federal administration is going out of their
way to decimate the natural resource industries in this state as well
as the nation.”

“They just put every oil and gas lease at risk,” Steve Lecher, attorney
for Solenex LLC, told the Great Falls Tribune. “If you can cancel one
oil and gas lease after 32 years what makes any lease safe?”

The Solenex lease cancellation is the culmination of a longstanding
effort by the Blackfeet Tribe and environmental groups to cease
exploration in the Badger-Two Medicine area, which was once part of the
Blackfeet reservation until it was ceded to the federal government in
1896, according to the Great Falls Tribune.

“To the Blackfeet, [the land is] the ‘Backbone of the World’ where they
were created, and associated with culturally important spirits, heroes
and historic figures central to Blackfeet religion and traditional
practices,” the Great Falls Tribune story stated. “Today, it’s part of a
designated Traditional Cultural District.”

“Today’s cancellation of the lease held by Solonex LLC signifies a major
victory in the tribe’s 34-year struggle to protect this sacred place
from development that would have caused irreparable damage to the
Badger-Two Medicine,” Jacqueline Pata, executive director of the
National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), said in the DOI press
release.

NCAI began working with the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana in early 2016 and
wrote a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, urging the
cancellation of any oil and gas leases, the press release stated.

The Great Falls Tribune reported that Solenex is deciding whether to challenge the decision.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

24 March, 2016

The BS never stops: "New York and London could be underwater within DECADES"

And pigs might fly. It's all just theory -- and all Warmist prophecy
has been wrong to date so this will be too. Note that even Michael
Mann does not believe this one

And the theory is extreme.
It starts out: "Researchers claim the initial melting of the great ice
sheets will put a cap of relatively fresh water on the ocean surfaces
near Antarctica and Greenland"

Maybe so but where is there any
evidence of "melting of the great ice sheets"? It hasn't happened
and Antarctic ice is in fact growing

And what's this business
about fresh water putting a "cap" on salt water? Salt diffuses
very rapidly in water so any cap would be very temporary -- lasting only
a few days at most. I would like to see any argument or evidence
to the contrary. It's just another implausible theory as far as I
can tell but I am open to enlightenment

Most scientists agree that sea levels will rise, but some say it won't
happen for centuries. Now, a new study suggests sea levels will
increase several feet over the next 50 years. It claims the
world's coastal cities, including New York and London, could be
underwater by the end of the century.

'We're in danger of handing young people a situation that's out of their
control,' James E. Hansen, a retired Nasa climate scientist who led the
new research, told The New York Times.

The paper was released this morning by a European science journal, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

The consequences would include killer storms, the disintegration of
large parts of the polar ice sheets and a rise in sea levels that would
exceed that worlds coastal cities before the end of this century, claim
researchers.

The paper talks about a specific mechanism that will provoke this abrupt climate shift.

Researchers claim the initial melting of the great ice sheets will put a
cap of relatively fresh water on the ocean surfaces near Antarctica and
Greenland.

This will slow down or even close the system of the ocean currents that
provides heat throughout the planet, allowing some of it to escape into
space.

The deeper areas of the ocean will experience warming, which will
ultimately accelerate the melting of the part of the ice sheet that sits
above sea level.

And the extreme temperature difference between the tropics and the poles
will produce powerful storms, which will mirror those that happened
120,000 years ago when Earth experienced a natural warming, according to
the paper.

Some experts see this paper as a step in the right direction to
understanding when the climate experienced sudden, drastic shifts.

But others still remain hesitant about the claims made in the draft
paper, released last year, and are still on the fence with the final
version. 'Some of the claims in this paper are indeed extraordinary,'
said Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State
University. 'They conflict with the mainstream understanding of
climate change to the point where the standard of proof is quite high.'

Conservatives shocked by the terror attacks in Brussels, Belgium Tuesday
have taken to Twitter to bash President Barack Obama and other
prominent Democrats for saying global warming, not terrorism, is the
U.S.'s biggest national security threat.

The Obama administration has been heavily criticized in the last year or
so for stepping up rhetoric surrounding man-made global warming, in
particular the claim that warming "poses immediate risks to our national
security."

Secretary of State John Kerry even blamed global warming, at least in
part, for the Syrian civil war, the refugee crisis and the rise of the
Islamic State.

"It is not a coincidence that immediately prior to the civil war in
Syria, the country experienced the worst drought on record," Kerry said
in an October speech. "Now, I'm not telling you that the crisis in Syria
was caused by climate change," but it "clearly made a bad situation a
lot worse."

"In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism
and if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists
say, you're going to see countries all over the world," Sanders said.

"This is what the CIA says," Sanders said. "They're going to be
struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to
grow their crops and you're going to see all kinds of international
conflict. But, of course, international terrorism is a major issue that
we have got to address today."

Now, conservatives with Twitter accounts are throwing these remarks back in their faces.

The authors evaluate the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) "consensus" that the increase of carbon dioxide in
the earth's atmosphere is of anthropogenic origin and is causing
dangerous global warming, climate change and climate disruption. They
conclude that the data do not support that supposition.

Most of the currently accepted scientific interpretations are examined
and the given impression that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will
increase the earth's surface and/or air temperature is questioned.

New insight is offered drawing a conclusion that no additional warming
is possible due to the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Acceptance of that IPCC paradigm is incurring costly and draconian
efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, tax such emissions and replace fossil
fuel combustion by alternative energy systems whether such alternatives
will achieve the desired results or not.

The totality of the data available on which that theory is based is
evaluated here, from Vostok ice-core measurements, to residence time of
CO2 in the atmosphere, to more recent studies of temperature changes
that inevitably precede CO2 changes, to global temperature trends, to
the current ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, to satellite
data for the geographic distribution of atmospheric CO2, to the effect
of solar activity on cosmic rays and cloud cover.

Nothing in the data supports the supposition that atmospheric CO2 is a
driver of weather or climate, or that human emissions control
atmospheric CO2. Furthermore, CO2 is not a pollutant, but an essential
ingredient of the Earth's ecosystem on which almost all life depends via
photosynthesis.

This paper rejects the new paradigm of "climate science" and asserts
that the traditional, century old meteorological concepts for the
factors that control weather and climate remain sound but need to be
reassessed.

The head of the United Nations' meteorological body warned the world was
going through an "alarming rate" of global warming due to rising carbon
dioxide emissions - but his statement ignored the 15-year "hiatus" in
warming, and 2016's incredibly strong El Ni¤o.

"The alarming rate of change we are now witnessing in our climate as a
result of greenhouse gas emissions is unprecedented in modern records,"
Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological
Organization, said March 21 in a statement on the release of the
group's' new climate report.

WMO's new "State of the Climate" report says the global average surface
temperature was 0.76 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average because
of man-made global warming and the current El Ni¤o - something Taalas
glossed over in his remarks.

Taalas also neglected to mention the recent rise in global average
temperature, spurred by El Ni¤o, came after a 15-year or so "hiatus" in
global warming. During this period, from 1998 to 2012, global surface
temperatures rose at a much slower rate than in previous decades.

The "hiatus" in warming was recently reaffirmed in a study by a group of
climate scientists. "[T]here is compelling evidence that there has been
a temporary slowdown in observed global surface warming," Ed Hawkins, a
climate scientist at the University of Reading and co-author of the
paper, wrote in a blog post on the new research.

Satellite-derived temperature records showed there was a more than two
decade-long "hiatus" in global warming. Though, the recent El Ni¤o
caused temperatures in the mid troposphere to rise enough to end the
"hiatus" in satellite datasets.

Taalas, however, wasn't alone. David Carlson, the head of the
WMO-sponsored World Climate Research Programme, claimed climate
scientists have been shocked by how much temperatures spiked so far in
2016 - again, while a naturally-occurring El Ni¤o warmed up the tropical
Pacific.

"The startlingly high temperatures so far in 2016 have sent shockwaves
around the climate science community," Carlson said in a statement,
echoing Taalas' alarm.

Climate scientists were sounding the alarm earlier in March after
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released new data
showing the global average surface temperature for February was the
highest ever recorded for that month, at 1.35 degrees Celsius warmer
than the 1951 to 1980 average.

"We are in a kind of climate emergency now," Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate
scientist at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, told The
Sydney Morning Herald. "This is really quite stunning" and "it's
completely unprecedented."

Ignored or brushed aside in the conversation is that February's record
high temperatures were ratcheted up by what's been called the strongest
El Ni¤o in 18 years. El Ni¤o is a naturally-occurring warming phase
across the span of the Pacific Ocean along the equator. It occurs fairly
regularly, about every two to seven years, and is often followed by a
La Ni¤a cooling phase.

Weather models say it's likely the world is headed for a La Ni¤a later
in 2016, but it's unclear how strong it will be. It's further unclear if
these amazed climate scientists will give equal measure to any sort of
La Ni¤a cooling period.

"Water temperatures just below the surface across the entire Pacific
Ocean have turned net cool, and this massive, cold blob is now lurking
below the surface waiting for its chance to turn up," journalist Karen
Braun wrote in a Reuters column. "The colder the anomaly becomes, the
bigger the potential for La Ni¤a becomes."

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, built by Bechtel, is a
joint effort of NRG Energy, BrightSource Energy and Google, and is said
to be the largest state-of-the-art renewable energy production project
of its kind. So how stands this Great Green Hope?

Ivanpah is a $2.2 billion solar project financed in part by $1.5 billion
in federal loans. It consists of three solar thermal power plants on a
4,000-acre tract of public land near the Mojave Desert and the
California-Nevada border. The facility utilizes more than 170,000
mirrors mounted to the ground that reflect sunlight up to three
450-foot-high towers topped by boilers that heat water to create steam,
which in turn is used to generate electricity.

The green energy and climate change lobbies are, of course, excited
about this dream-come-true example of how the U.S., and eventually the
world, can survive and thrive without pollution-causing coal-burning and
natural gas-burning electricity production facilities.

But their hopes have exceeded reality, as is so often the case with
these idealistic dreams. The project has three major problems, one of
which has produced a huge rift between the Left's internal factions.
While green energy folks are ecstatic over the huge solar plant, other
environmentalists are outraged that the plant has killed thousands of
birds, many of which are fried to death.

The second problem is that the so-called green energy plant is not as
green as you might expect: It burns vast quantities of fossil fuels and
produces pollution. Ivanpah burns natural gas each morning for start-up,
and reportedly burned 867,740 million BTU of natural gas, which is
enough to power the annual needs of 20,660 Southern California homes. On
top of that, it emitted 46,084 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2014.

Furthermore, it has so far failed to produce the expected power it is
contractually required to deliver to PG&E Corp. As a result, the
solar plant may be forced to shut down unless the California Public
Utilities Commission gives permission for PG&E to overlook the
shortfall and give Ivanpah another year to sort out its problems. It
began operating in early 2014.

Spokesmen for Ivanpah's operator, BrightSource, and NRG reportedly
declined to comment on its future, but NRG said it has taken more than a
year to adjust equipment and learn how to best run it. Naturally,
Barack Obama's Energy Department supports giving the plant more time.

Advocates also paint an over-positive picture of solar energy job
creation. The Solar Energy Industries Association touts spectacular job
growth in the solar industry, boasting "the solar industry continues to
support robust job growth, creating 35,052 new jobs in 2015, a growth
rate of approximately twelve times greater than that of the overall
economy."

Fast job growth during new industry "booms" is not unusual, and touting
such growth is good PR, even when it exaggerates reality. For the sake
of contrast, however, 35,000 jobs still doesn't offset the job losses
from Obama killing the Keystone Pipeline, much less those in the coal
industry against which he's waging war.

But when you analyze this solar project, it quickly becomes clear that
government has more to do with engineering this jobs increase than does
the actual market demand for workers in solar energy. You, the taxpayer,
heavily subsidized this industry, and when taxpayer money pays the
bills, an industry can and does create jobs without a real demand for
them.

Under Obama, the federal government has wasted billions of dollars of
hard-earned taxpayer money on green energy efforts that failed or
under-performed, even as it enacted policies that punished Americans
working in the coal industry and related businesses with substantial
unemployment, created revenue problems in the economies of coal
producing states, and burdened all Americans with higher energy prices -
by design, we might add. The administration's tunnel vision on reducing
the effects on the environment of fossil fuel energy production that
have powered the U.S. and most of the world for decades has caused
untold misery.

The heralded Solyndra solar company quickly became a debacle that put
1,100 people out of work when it closed down, wasting $535 million in
government loans in the process. And, the Abound Solar plant, which
received $400 million in federal loan guarantees in 2010, when the Obama
administration sought to use stimulus funds to promote green energy,
filed for bankruptcy two years later. That facility sits unoccupied, is
littered with hazardous waste, broken glass and contaminated water, and
it will require an estimated $3.7 million to clean and repair the
building for use.

None of this pain and suffering was necessary. The normal progress of
technological advancement would have gradually replaced fossil fuels as
the primary source of electricity, when those less polluting methods
were up to the task, like the automobile replaced the horse and buggy.

Once the Left gets an idea, however, it dives in head first, eyes
closed, with a "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" approach that
generally produces more harm than good.

Obama lets nothing get in the way of his ideological fantasies, least of
all reality. Any harm and destruction that occurs is regarded as
necessary collateral damage on the way to his socialist utopia.

On 19 March every year, millions of people in developed countries spend
60 minutes of their lives reeling in collective guilt over the evil of
fossil fuels. But when people turn off the lights for Earth Hour, they
only hold a candle to their own ignorance.

Earth Hour is exactly the type of feel-good event today's
environmentalists seem to relish. It provides a readymade opportunity
for people to flaunt their social conscience by denouncing
industrialisation, electricity, fossil fuels and the other `excesses'
that make 21st-century life worth living.

But what these candle-waving, middle-class do-gooders forget are the 1.3
billion people who will spend all of 19 March in the dark - not out of
some desire to be close to nature, but because that's how they spend
every other day of the year.

How long without electricity would today's Earth Hour enthusiasts last
before their warm inner glow turned to despair? Perhaps if people were
forced seriously to contemplate life off the grid, they'd come to accept
the empirical fact that nothing has done more to advance the plight of
humanity than cheap, reliable electricity.

The problem with Earth Hour isn't that burning candles actually emits
more carbon than using a lightbulb, nor that large numbers of households
simultaneously going dark disrupts the power grid and actually
increases emissions.

No, the problem with Earth Hour is that it makes a villain out of
electricity provision, the very thing that's allowed humanity to rise
out of abject poverty and reach the standard of living we enjoy today.
So, since you probably won't hear it anywhere else, here are just a few
of the tremendous benefits of cheap, reliable electricity:

It feeds the world

Worldwide poverty is at its lowest rate in human
history. This is in large part because of the modern methods of mass
food production that depend on cheap electricity. Industrial farming
practices, including irrigation, mass food storage and transport, would
all be impossible if environmentalists had their way. In the Middle Ages
over 90 per cent of Europe's workforce worked on farms; today, less
than five per cent does. This has freed millions of people from
backbreaking labour to develop their own skills and talents, which in
turn have enriched our lives.

And once this mass-produced food reaches our homes,
it is electricity that allows us to cook it quickly and safely, without
exposing ourselves to health risks from chronic smoke inhalation. Two
million people in developing countries still die each year from noxious
fumes caused by traditional indoor heating and cooking practices. This
gives some insight into what cheap electricity has meant for human
welfare.

It saves lives

Electricity has made possible the advances and wide
availability of modern medicine, from vaccines to antibiotics and
surgery. According to the World Health Organisation, the measles vaccine
alone has saved over 17million lives worldwide since 2000. This
wouldn't have happened had there not been cheap, electrically powered
refrigeration for the storage and transportation of the vaccine.

It creates prosperity

As Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical
Environmentalist, points out, the electricity available to people in
wealthy countries is roughly the equivalent of having 56 servants
working for you in pre-industrial times. It's easy to forget this if you
have the luxury of boiling a cup of tea and sitting down to watch a
digitally recorded episode of MasterChef once your annual 60 minutes of
environmental self-flagellation is up. But for the people of, say,
Liberia or South Sudan or Sierra Leone, every hour is Earth Hour. Life
is short and illness often deadly. People spend most of their waking
hours fighting a neverending struggle for basic necessities like food
and shelter.

There is no doubt that our prosperity has come at a cost to the natural
world. But if we care about making the world a better place, the last
thing we should be doing is turning off the lights. If what we want is a
genuine accommodation with Mother Nature, we should be concentrating
humanity's collective energies on finding cleaner and cheaper ways of
sustaining modern life, not harking back to some pre-industrial fantasy.

Contrary to the delusions of eco-pessimists, cheap electricity is
exactly the kind of innovation we need more of. London's air quality
today is the best it's been since coal became a common fuel for lime
burners in the early Middle Ages. Why? Because thanks to electricity,
factories are no longer run on coal power. Nor do households have to
burn it to cook and stay warm.

The idea that human progress actually helps the environment flies in the
face of everything today's environmental zealots hold dear. In their
eyes, humanity must repent for daring to industrialise. That means
putting an end to the wealth and material excess that characterise our
daily lives.

If people are actually interested in saving the planet, they'd be better
off lighting their houses with electricity, not mourning human progress
in the dark.

Below is an enraged whine from the vested interests created by the
global warming nonsense. At a time of budget difficulties, PM
Turnbull is to be congratulated for cutting useless expenditure

The Turnbull Government has today announced plans to strip $1.3 billion
in renewable energy budget funding, according to the Australian Solar
Council - the peak body for the solar industry.

"Malcolm Turnbull's Clean Energy Investment Fund is like an exquisitely
decorated Easter Egg. It looks great on the outside, but inside it's a
rotten egg".

"The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has $1.3 billion in
allocated and unspent funds between 2016-2022. The Government has
announced it will replace this with $1 billion in funds between 2016 and
2026, taken from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation's existing $10
billion budget."

That amounts to $1.3 billion in funding stripped from ARENA and $1 billion reallocated from within the CEFC.

Further the Turnbull Government has announced that early stage renewable
R&D and commercialisation will now be majority funded by debt and
equity.

"By its very nature early stage research is speculative. Almost no
projects will be fundable under this model. This will rip the
guts out of renewables innovation in Australia".

"The Turnbull Government has tried unsuccessfully to abolish
ARENA and the CEFC. This is a backdoor way to gut ARENA."

"ARENA has played a critical role in supporting research and
development and early stage commercialisation of renewable energy
projects through grant funding. Stripping its budget, taking away
funding for early stage commercialisation, and directing the money be
spent on non-renewables projects, achieves its goal through other
means."

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

23 March, 2016

Will plants' response to increased CO2 make heatwaves more intense than thought?

The report by Peter Hannam below seemed like a possible real concern
if ever we do get global warming. But I somehow knew that they
would have ignored something important so I looked up the underlying
journal article -- abstract thereof also reproduced below. It is
all just modelling rubbish. When Warmist models show predictive
skill will be the time to take notice of them. It hasn't happened
yet.

But there is something amusing in the article nonetheless.
They seem to base their claims on how an individual leaf stoma reacts to
higher CO2 but forget to look at the whole plant. That
higher CO2 levels will produce bigger plants and hence more stomata
seems to be overlooked. With more stomata the overall water
release may remain unchanged.

Warmists are such a laugh!
Junk science all the way. It's such junk that even a humble social
scientist like me can see through it. And shifty old Peter Hannam
swallows it all hook, line and sinker. He must never ask any
questions

Peter Hannam

Heatwaves in the northern hemisphere may become as much as 5 degrees
warmer than previously estimated by mid-century because plants' response
to higher carbon dioxide levels has been miscalculated, according to
new research by Australian scientists.

As atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas increase, plant stomata –
the tiny pores on leaves that open to take in CO2 and let out water
vapour – won't need to open as much.

"There's less water vapour being lost so you have a net warming effect,"
said Jatin Kala, a lecturer from Murdoch University and lead author of
the paper that was published Monday in Nature Scientific Reports.

The researchers used data from 314 plant species across 56 field sites
to examine how plants responded. Existing climate models had assumed all
plants would trade water for carbon in exactly the same way.

Needle-leaf forests, tundra and agricultural land used for crops would
likely suffer the biggest temperature increases. Heatwaves from Europe
to China were likely to become 3-5 degrees hotter than the already
higher base expected from global warming, Dr Kala said.

"These more detailed results are confronting but they help explain why
many climate models have consistently underestimated the increase in the
intensity of heatwaves and the rise in maximum temperatures when
compared to observations."

The results do not necessarily apply to southern hemisphere regions to
the same extent. "We don't have an observation of how Australian
vegetation will respond to rising CO2," he said.

CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and the ARC Centre of Excellence for
Climate System Science developed the Australian Community Climate and
Earth System Simulator (ACCESS) model used in this study.

Impact of the representation of stomatal conductance on model projections of heatwave intensity

Jatin Kala et al.

Abstract

Stomatal conductance links plant water use and carbon uptake, and is a
critical process for the land surface component of climate models.
However, stomatal conductance schemes commonly assume that all
vegetation with the same photosynthetic pathway use identical plant
water use strategies whereas observations indicate otherwise. Here, we
implement a new stomatal scheme derived from optimal stomatal theory and
constrained by a recent global synthesis of stomatal conductance
measurements from 314 species, across 56 field sites. Using this new
stomatal scheme, within a global climate model, subtantially increases
the intensity of future heatwaves across Northern Eurasia. This
indicates that our climate model has previously been under-predicting
heatwave intensity. Our results have widespread implications for other
climate models, many of which do not account for differences in stomatal
water-use across different plant functional types, and hence, are also
likely under projecting heatwave intensity in the future.

They may be but so what? All the evidence is that CO2 is NOT
linked to warming. In fact the PETM (discussed below) seems to be a
good example of that. Global temperatures in the PETM
increased by 5–8°C. But the findings below are that CO2 release rates
then were much LESS than what we see today. So LOW CO2 levels
apparently went with high temperatures. No wonder the author below
made the rather despairing comment I have highlighted below

The Earth's climate is entering 'uncharted territory' and the rate at which carbon is being released is said to be to blame.

By studying deep sea sediments, researchers have discovered humans are
releasing carbon 10 times faster than during any event in the past 66
million years.

And in 2014, carbon release rates from human sources reached a record high in 2014 of about 37 billion metric tons of CO2.

The earliest instrumental records of Earth's climate, as measured by thermometers and other tools, start in the 1850s.

To look further back in time, scientists investigate air bubbles trapped
in ice cores, which expands the window to less than a million years.

But to study Earth's history over tens to hundreds of millions of years,
researchers examine the chemical and biological signatures of deep sea
sediment archives.

New research published today in Nature Geoscience by Richard Zeebe,
professor at the University of Hawai'i M?noa School of Ocean and Earth
Science and Technology (SOEST), and colleagues looks at changes of
Earth's temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since the end
of the age of the dinosaurs.

The research team developed a new approach and was able to determine the
duration of the onset of an important past climate event, the
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, PETM for short, 56 million years ago.

Their new method allows them to extract rates of change from a sediment
record without the need for an actual sediment age model.

Applied to the PETM, they calculated how fast the carbon was released,
how fast Earth's surface warmed, and constrained the time scale of the
onset, which was at least 4,000 years.

The rate of carbon release during the PETM was determined to be much
smaller than the current input of carbon to the atmosphere from human
activities.

Carbon release rates from human sources reached a record high in 2014 of about 37 billion metric tons of CO2.

Whereas large climate transitions in the past may have been relatively smooth, there is no guarantee for the future.

The climate system is non-linear, which means its response to a forcing
(such as our CO2 emissions) is a complex process involving a whole suite
of components.

The research team developed a new approach to determine the duration of
the onset of an important past climate event, the Paleocene-Eocene
Thermal Maximum, PETM for short, 56 million years ago.

'As far as we know, the PETM has the largest carbon release during the past 66 million years,' said Zeebe.

Zeebe and his team combined analyses of chemical properties of PETM
sediment cores with numerical simulations of Earth's climate and carbon
cycle.

Their new method allows them to extract rates of change from a sediment
record without the need for an actual sediment age model.

Applied to the PETM, they calculated how fast the carbon was released,
how fast Earth's surface warmed, and constrained the time scale of the
onset, which was at least 4,000 years.

The rate of carbon release during the PETM was determined to be much
smaller than the current input of carbon to the atmosphere from human
activities.

Carbon release rates from human sources reached a record high in 2014 of about 37 billion metric tons of CO2.

The researchers estimated the maximum sustained carbon release rate
during the PETM had to be less than 4 billion metric tons of CO2 per
year - about one-tenth the current rate.

'Because our carbon release rate is unprecedented over such a long time
period in Earth's history, it also means that we have effectively
entered a 'no-analogue' state.

'This
represents a big challenge for projecting future climate changes because
we have no good comparison from the past,' said Zeebe.

Whereas large climate transitions in the past may have been relatively
smooth, there is no guarantee the same will happen in the future.

The climate system is non-linear, which means its response to a
'forcing' - such as our CO2 emissions - is a complex process involving a
variety of components.

'If you kick a system very fast, it usually responds differently than if you nudge it slowly but steadily', said Zeebe.

'Also, it is rather likely that future disruptions of ecosystems will
exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM,' Zeebe
added.

'In studying one of the most dramatic episodes of global change since
the end of the age of the dinosaurs, these scientists show that we are
currently in uncharted territory in the rate carbon is being released
into the atmosphere and oceans,' says Candace Major, program director in
the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Ocean Sciences,
which funded the research.

Scientists like Zeebe also study the PETM to better understand long-term changes in Earth's future climate.

Most of the current climate debate concentrates only on this century but
the PETM suggests that the consequences of our massive fossil fuel
burning will have a much, much longer tail.

'Everyone is focused on what happens by 2100. But that's only two
generations from today. It's like: If the world ends in 2100 we're
probably OK!' said Zeebe.

'But it's very clear that over a longer timescale there will be much bigger changes.'

Zeebe and his colleagues continue their work on the PETM to study other
aspects of the event - for example, determining how severe ocean
acidification was during the PETM and what impact it had on calcifying
organisms in the ocean.

This may provide insight about what to expect in the future as Earth's climate continues to warm and oceans keep acidifying.

The Environmental Protection Agency in June will begin its multistep
midterm review of the fuel economy standards it wants cars and light
trucks to meet by the 2025 model year.

Put in place in August 2012, the EPA standards would require new
American-made cars and light trucks to average 54.5 miles per gallon
less than 10 years from now. The standard today (for model year 2016) is
34.5 mpg.

Enacted in 1975 following the Arab oil embargo, the corporate average
fuel economy, or CAFE, standards were first sold to voters as a way of
reducing American dependence on imported oil.

Today the standards are sold as an uncontroversial means of reducing
fossil fuel consumption to save the planet from climate change
Armageddon.

But it’s important to recognize that fuel economy standards are mostly the stuff of fiction.

Because the standards are based on averages, few motorists will be
driving 54.5-mpg vehicles anytime soon. Automakers can still produce
gas-guzzling SUVs as long as they also produce gas-sippers.

Further, the fuel efficiency ratings posted on the side windows of new
vehicles are determined by running the engines of various with
ethanol-free gasoline in an indoor factory laboratory.

Consequently, mileage ratings gathered on the highway by vehicles
burning blended fuels predictably fall short of EPA marks - much as
then-Sen. Hillary Clinton missed the mark when she claimed in a May 2008
speech at the North Carolina Democratic Party’s 2008 Jefferson-Jackson
Dinner in Raleigh, N.C., that automobiles getting between 100 and 150
miles per gallon would be in our garages “in a couple of years.”

What EPA bureaucrats appear not to understand - or refuse to acknowledge
- is that improved fuel efficiency also can generate rebound effects.

Because the cost per mile of driving a 54.5 mpg car is lower than that
of a 34.5-mpg car, consumers rationally may respond to tougher standards
by driving more miles, offsetting the standard’s intended effect.

The main problem with the mandated fuel economy standards is that the
least expensive way for automakers to comply is by making vehicles
lighter.

Replacing steel with aluminum and fiberglass is cheaper than
re-engineering already highly fuel-efficient engines. In fact, that may
be the only way to meet the latest rules, according to the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Lighter cars and trucks are less crash-worthy than heavier ones.
Stricter mileage standards therefore will lead to more injuries and
deaths on the nation’s highways.

So while Washington politicians and EPA bureaucrats focus on being
green, they ignore the death and destruction their mandates trigger.

Another way to meet tougher mileage rules, of course, is to produce more
hybrid or plug-in cars and trucks. That strategy may have made sense to
automakers when the retail price of gasoline was $4 per gallon, but not
when a gallon of gas costs less than $2 in many places.

It is no surprise that President Barack Obama wants to curry more favor
with environmentalists before leaving the White House, but the
administration’s micromanagement of the auto industry will, as usual,
fall on the backs of American consumers.

Designed in D.C. for a world fearing that crude oil would soon run out,
the CAFE standards mean that cars and light trucks will carry much
bigger price tags and offer their occupants less protection in crashes
than the gas guzzlers of a bygone era.

‘Green’ — the status symbol the affluent can afford that costs the poor

Researchers have found that some buyers are willing to pay for
environmentally friendly products because those products are “status
symbols.” A report in the Atlantic states:

“Environmentally-friendly behaviors typically go unseen; there’s no
public glory in shortened showers or diligent recycling. But when people
can use their behavior to broadcast their own goodness, their
incentives shift. The people who buy Priuses and solar panels still
probably care about the environment—it’s just that researchers have
found that a portion of their motivation might come from a place of
self-promotion, much like community service does good and fits on a
résumé.”

With “green” having become a status symbol, the affluent can afford it.
Yet, their desire to “broadcast their own goodness” actually results in
higher costs to those who can least afford it.

Solar power is a great example. On the website for SunRun, a solar panel
leasing company, through the story of customer “Pat,” they even
encourage the “green status symbol” as a sales feature. While Pat may be
happy with her solar panels and “hopes that all her neighbors will go
solar, too,” her “green status symbol” costs all the utility’s customers
who mostly can’t afford to “go solar.”

As I’ve written on many times, the idea of solar leasing works because
of tax incentives and a system called “net metering.” First, those tax
incentives are paid for by all taxpayers.

Anytime the government gives something away, everyone pays for it. Net
metering is a little harder to understand. In short, the utility is
required by state laws to purchase the extra electricity generated by
rooftop solar panels at the full retail rate—even though they could
purchase it at a fraction of the cost from the power plant. As more and
more people sign up for these programs, it increases the overall cost of
electricity.

Remember, however, those with solar panels could have a zero dollar
utility bill but they are still using electricity from the utility
company at night and generate additional customer service costs such as
transmission lines. Ultimately, the cost of electricity goes up on the
bills of non-solar customers.

Due to this “cost shifting,” many states are changing the net metering
policies so solar customers cover the unpaid grid costs. However, as has
happened recently in Nevada, the revised programs change the economics
and make it unprofitable for companies to operate in the state.

This is clear to see in overall rising electric costs—about 34 percent
per year according to the Institute for Energy Research—despite the main
fuel costs (coal and natural gas) being at all-time lows.

Earlier this month, Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) addressed another
interesting angle: “Green energy can’t compete with $30 oil.” The only
way for “green” energy to survive,” it says, is: “by the government
forcing people to buy them and jacking up electricity and heating prices
to families and businesses.”

A new study from the University of Chicago, referenced by IBD, concludes
that for an electric vehicle to be cheaper to operate than the modern
internal combustion engine, “the price of oil would need to exceed $350 a
barrel.” The IBD states: “without massive additional taxpayer subsidies
to companies such as Tesla, the price of oil would have to not just
double or triple, but rocket more than 10-fold before battery-operated
cars make financial sense.”

Yet, sales for the Tesla Model S, the International Business Times
(IBT), reports: “actually rose 16 percent last year, in part because
they serve as status symbols or appeal to the environmental concerns of
well-to-do drivers.”

On March 11, in the Wall Street Journal, columnist Holman Jenkins
writes: “Voters should be mad at electric cars.” Why? Because, as he
explains: “how thoroughly Tesla’s business model depends on taxpayer
largess.” Jenkins states: “Tesla’s cars have status cachet, yes. Even
some middle-class customers might be attracted, notwithstanding low gas
prices, as long as helped by an enormous dollop of taxpayer favoritism.”

As he lays out for the reader the “absurdity of their subsidy regime,”
Jenkins concludes: “And you wonder why, on some level voters sense that
our political class has led America into a dead-end where the only
people doing well are the ones who have subsidies, regulation and
political influence stacked in their favor.”

Alternative fuels have also taken a hit with low oil prices. According
to IBT: “corn ethanol and algae-based diesel need oil prices at around
double today’s levels—or higher—to compete with fossil fuels.”

Another fixture of the “green” social movement that has taken a toll in
the low oil-priced environment is, surprisingly, recycling. Calling
recycling a “$100-billion-a-year business,” National Public Radio
reporter Stacy Venek Smith, points out: “Plastic is made from oil, so
when oil gets cheap, it gets really cheap to make fresh plastic. When
the price of oil gets really low, using recycled plastic can actually be
more expensive because it has to be sorted and cleaned.”

In Salt Lake City, KUTV reported: “Many businesses are finding it
cheaper to manufacture new plastic than to use recycled materials.” In
Montana, according to the Philipsburg Mail, plastics are no longer being
picked up for recycling “because the price per pound was so low, it
didn’t cover the cost of gas and mileage to make the trip.”

The problem is international. Germany has a reputation as a recycling
model with a goal of 36 percent of its plastic production coming from
recycled materials and “German consumers finance recycling via licensing
fees, which are added on to the price of the products they purchase,”
says Deutsche Welle, Germany’s leading organization for international
media development, in a report titled: “Low oil prices threaten
Germany’s plastics recycling.” It states: “For manufacturers with eyes
firmly fixed on costs, opting for cheaper new plastics would be the more
economically attractive option.”

However, many companies, wanting to appear “environmentally friendly”
will still “pay up for recycled plastics, despite higher costs”—meaning
higher consumer prices for the plastics they produce.

Addressing the recycling problem, the Guardian states: “Recycling only
works when there’s someone on the other side of the equation, someone
who wants to buy the recycled material.”

Fortunately for the recycling industry, but bad for consumers who pay
higher prices for plastic products, the Philipsburg Mail concludes: “A
lot of Fortune 500 Companies still want to purchase recyclables to meet
sustainability goals.”

Despite claims of “green prosperity” that implies such policies can
“fight poverty and raise living standards,” the opposite is true.
Everyone pays more—even those who can least afford it—so the elites,
seeking green status symbols, can feel good and appear to be community
leaders.

Government programs often entail contradictions. The classic type is a
policy that goes against the original justification for a program, such
as anti-poverty policies that penalize people when their incomes rise.
The National Wildlife Refuge System, which turned 113 years old on March
14, exemplifies a contradiction pervasive in environmental policy,
according to Ryan M. Yonk, co-author of Nature Unbound: Bureaucracy vs.
the Environment. What’s the contradiction?

On the one hand, many government-designated wildlife preserves and
wilderness areas were created to prevent humans from upsetting the
“balance of nature”—the notion that a natural eco-system represents an
ideal equilibrium with just the right proportion of plant and animal
species so that they can sustain their populations indefinitely. On the
other hand, left to their own devices, flora and fauna work ceaselessly
to push each other out of the equation, unbalancing the supposed
“balance of nature.” Thus, letting nature “do its thing” can be good for
some species and bad for others, sometimes to the point of reducing
another vaunted environmental goal: biodiversity.

There are variations on this theme. Conservation managers at Idaho’s
Minidoka Wildlife Refuge, for example, had a policy of protecting
migratory pelicans—an effort to maintain the “proper” number of
pelicans. But such favoritism has been “unbalanced,” leading to
diminished numbers of cut-throat trout. Now the refuge personnel are
trying to save the trout. “Continuing to manage using the notion of a
balance of nature will continue to lead to perverse outcomes like those
presently occurring in Idaho,” Yonk writes in a recent op-ed. “Because
as long as ‘balance’ itself is the goal, what we will see are simply
men’s ideas of what balance should look like. After all, a ‘human-less’
reality would be one that did not even include wildlife management.”

THE organisers of Earth Hour have hit back at criticism that the now
nine-year-old campaign is a “silly fad” that should be “ignored”.

On Sky News’ Viewpoint program last night, host Chris Kenny joined
social media naysayers and called out the campaign for being a “pet
rock”.

Meanwhile, Earth Hour organisers have criticised Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull for not switching off over the weekend “despite countless
requests…to protect the places we love” and despite international
momentum including support from the United Nations.

“There are some very cynical people in the world,” Ms Webb told news.com.au.

“There are also those who have very closely held interests that are
threatened by the move away from fossil fuels on to clean, renewable
energy. Sadly, a small number of powerful people make a lot of money
from creating the pollution that is causing global warming and they are
doing all they can to keep polluting, with no regard for the devastating
impact this is having around the world.”

Ms Webb said Australian leaders aren’t keeping “up with the demands of
the Australian people by putting strong policies in place to transition
Australia as a whole away from dirty fossil fuels that are causing
rising temperatures and more extreme weather, and onto clean, safe,
renewable energy”.

Opponents have long fought against the campaign since its inception in
2007, arguing that switching off for an hour one day a year will make no
difference to the planet’s fragile ecosystem, and in fact, could cost
the planet more by switching your lights on and off.

“We need something more. Much more. An hour is just a gimmick,” wrote
the Australian Business Review’s Daniel Palmer in a 2013 editorial.

“It’s a bit like the Valentine’s Day of the environmental movement.
Aside from the strident environmentalists, most people who commit to it
are ‘guilted’ into it. Flowers on Valentine’s Day can’t make up for 364
days of selfishness, just as turning the lights off for an hour can’t
make up for 8,759 hours of lazy energy inefficiency (or 8,783 in a leap
year).”

But Ms Webb says the awareness that Earth Hour generates does more for the planet than not doing it at all.

“One of the most valuable things about Earth Hour is that it is a
catalyst for millions of people to have a conversation about climate
change, what this means for us in Australia in particular, and why it is
so important that we take action now to ensure we avoid the worst
impacts of rising temperatures and extreme weather that we are currently
facing,” Ms Webb said.

“We need moments like Earth Hour each year to ensure that climate change
stays at the top of the agenda and so that we can continue to
demonstrate to our leaders that there is huge support in the Australian
community for transitioning away from dirty fossil fuels like coal, oil
and gas that are causing the impacts of global warming and onto clean,
renewable sources of energy like solar and wind, that Australia has in
abundance.”

Earth Hour could not confirm to news.com.au how many Australians
participated in the event this year, citing its most recent figures
dating back to 2014, which “found that 1 in 3 Australians, or over 7
million people, took part in Earth Hour Australia”.

The campaign began in 2007 when 2.2 million Sydneysiders switched off
their lights. By 2014, they told news.com.au, over 7 million Australians
had joined the switch across the country.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

22 March, 2016

Dear Naomi revisited

I had a very nice Naomi in my early life -- Naomi Holbeck. I sometimes
wonder where she is now. But the Naomi I want to talk about here
is a much less pleasant Naomi: Naomi Oreskes, one of the many
climate frauds.

Something that often gives liars away is that they exaggerate.
They seem to believe Dr. Goebbels' dictum that big lies are more
credible than small ones. The classic example of that is the many
elections that various Communist dictators ran in the 20th
century. They would always claim that they won 98% or
thereabouts of the vote. Nobody believed them of course.

So when Warmists claim that 97% of scientists believe in global warming,
historically aware people know how to view that. It's not
even a sophisticated lie. Some industrious person has put together
a list of 97 published rebuttals
to John Cook's 97% claim but it was hardly necessary. One wonders how
Cook feels to have his work so swingeingly attacked. I suppose he just
wears the usual Leftist carapace of Freudian denial.

But the biggest liar of all was Naomi Oreskes. What she claimed in 2004 was TOTALLY unbelievable. In an article in "Science" magazine
she claimed to have done a study of the scientific literature on
climate change and found that "none of the papers disagreed with the
consensus position". In other words she claimed 100%
agreement. She was less truthful than even a Communist
dictator. There were already known in 2004 some prominent
scientists who were vocal climate skeptics such as Richard Lindzen and
Fred Singer. So Oreskes was plainly wrong in claiming that she
could find none of them.

The reason I am raking over such old history now is that her work falls
neatly into a modern area of scientific concern. In both the
social and biological sciences there has been lately a lot of heartburn
about unreplicable results. Replication is the test of a
scientific claim and it is the central reason why academic articles are
so turgid. A believable scientific claim has to go into great
detail about how it reached its conclusion so that others can do exactly
the same thing to test those conclusions. If someone repeats
exactly what an author did and gets DIFFERENT conclusions, a great
lightning bolt falls from the heavens and incinerates the original
author. Just joking! But the effect is not much less than
that. Nobody believes the original claim any more.

And in recent times there have been many attempts to do such exact
replications. And the results have been terrible. Around two
thirds of established scientific findings in the social and biological
sciences have been found to fail replication. Much of what we
thought we knew is false.

And the Oreskes claim failed replication. Benny Peiser was one of
many who found the Oreskes claim laughable but he was the one who put
his money where his mouth was and actually made an attempt to replicate the Oreskes procedures.
He got vastly different results. So by modern scientific
standards, the Oreskes findings are wrong and should not be quoted as
support for anything.

So if anybody now quotes the Oreskes finding without attaching the word
"unreplicable" to it, they thereby show that they are out of step with
modern scientific standards.

But Warmists abandoned science long ago, of course. In their major
papers they withheld details that would allow replications of their
work. And when other scientists asked for the withheld details,
the Warmists refused point blank to assist. They branded such
reqeusts as "harassment". Their response actually made replication
unnecessary. It revealed that they themselves knew their work to
be fraudulent.

But Naomi has won great honor and glory for her work. Far from
being discredited, she has risen greatly in the world. She is now a
professor at Harvard. With almost total Leftist control of the
media, the bureaucracy and the educational system, the modern world
floats on a sea of lies and Naomi is just one of many frauds -- which is
why you get Donald Trump, the only prominent figure bold enough to
trash completely the Left-led consensus.

Leftist scientists advocating secrecy

They believe in transparency -- for others

The group has been a fierce advocate for transparency, regularly
championing investigations that rely on public documents to hold
government officials accountable.

But over the past year, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a
Cambridge-based advocacy group that represents thousands of scientists
around the country, has campaigned to limit the scrutiny of scientists
who work for public universities and agencies through public records
requests.

These scientists, the group says, are increasingly being harassed by
ideological foes who seek to unearth documents that would derail or
sully their work with evidence of bias.

“We don’t want to work in an environment where every keystroke is
subject to public records,’’ said Michael Halpern, who oversees strategy
at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned
Scientists, founded at MIT in 1969. “We’re trying to protect the
deliberative nature of science. . . . Scientists need space to come to
new knowledge, and to give critical feedback.”

But the group’s efforts have sparked tensions with other open-government
advocates, who have argued that it risks opening loopholes that could
make it easier for officials and agencies to hide information from the
public.

“It’s just gibberish to say these laws stifle research,” said David
Cuillier, director of the University of Arizona School of Journalism and
a member of the Society of Professional Journalists’s freedom of
information committee. “These are government scientists funded by
taxpayers, and the public is entitled to see what they’re working on.”

The dispute centers on the proper balance between academic freedom and
the transparency of public institutions, and has escalated as a growing
number of scientists, typically those who research controversial topics
such as climate change, receive public records requests.

The requests often seek e-mails between scientists in hopes of exposing
ideological bias or a political agenda. While open records laws vary
from state to state, the controversy primarily affects researchers at
public universities or those involved in projects that receive public
funding.

Critics say that many of the requests abuse the spirit of open records
laws and threaten to stifle research. They also make it harder for
public universities to conduct controversial research and attract top
faculty, compared with private universities where scientists aren’t
generally subject to open records laws, they say.

“Our role is to raise awareness about how scientists are being harassed,” Halpern said.

Halpern wants exceptions made for scientists in public information laws,
and has argued for new standards at federal institutions, such as the
National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, that
would shield e-mails with fellow scientists, research notes, primary
data, and other correspondence they consider confidential.

In a 2015 report titled “Freedom to Bully: How Laws Intended to Free
Information Are Used to Harass Researchers,” the Union of Concerned
Scientists cited a host of examples of researchers who said they had
been harassed by public records requests.

A climate scientist, Michael Mann, who had taught at the University of
Virginia and now teaches at Penn State, described how a conservative
group called the American Tradition Institute used Virginia’s open
records law to seek all his e-mail correspondence with other scientists.

He resisted, and after a lengthy legal battle, the Supreme Court of
Virginia rejected the request in 2014, ruling that Mann’s e-mails were
exempt from the state’s public records law.

He described the request as an “attack” and said it reflected how public
records requests are being used “in a way that they were never intended
to be used.”

“What groups like ATI are looking for is a weak link, some institution
that, rather than asserting its rights . . . will simply take the path
of least resistance (and expense), and cave,” Mann wrote in an e-mail.
“That’s why they continue to probe, filing vexatious open records
requests against climate researchers in state after state.”

The report also cited the case of Steve Wing, an epidemiologist from the University of North Carolina.

Wing said he was targeted with “extensive and burdensome” public records
requests by the North Carolina Pork Council, a trade group, after he
released a study in the 1990s linking neighbors’ illnesses to hog farms.
The group sought all materials associated with the study, including the
names of the study’s participants.

Wing said a university administrator told him he could be subject to
criminal prosecution if he failed to comply, and he eventually
negotiated a compromise to turn over documents that were redacted to
protect the participants’ confidentiality.

But open government advocates note that public records requests have
helped expose conflicts of interests involving scientists, such as
Wei-Hock Soon, a physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics who has argued that global warming can be explained by
variations in the sun’s energy, rather than increased carbon emissions
from pollution.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, environmental groups obtained
documents showing that Soon had failed to disclose he had accepted more
than $1.2 million from the fossil-fuel industry.

Michael Macleod-Ball, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union
who specializes in open records laws, said about two dozen states have
some type of exemption to their public records laws for researchers at
public universities.

The federal freedom of information law, he said, has no such protections
unless the records involve national security, trade secrets, or several
other exempt categories.

In Massachusetts, the open records law includes no exemptions for the
communications of researchers at public universities. Proposed changes
to the records law, slated for debate this year, would not add any.

But state officials, as well as those at public universities, have often
cited other exemptions to deny requests or redact records, or only make
them available at exorbitant fees. For example, the law allows the
University of Massachusetts to exempt “trade secrets or other
proprietary information” from public records requests.

The debate has intensified in recent weeks. In a New York Times opinion
piece in January, Paul Thacker, a journalist and former congressional
investigator, wrote that adding exemptions to public records laws would
set a “dangerous precedent.”

“When research is paid for by the public, the public has a right to
demand transparency,” he wrote. “Scientists who profess agreement with
transparency only when it is on their terms are not for transparency at
all.”

“The suggestion that scientists are hypocrites for supporting
transparency while opposing absolute disclosure does not hold water,” he
wrote.

Halpern said the union supports keeping all correspondence between
scientists and government officials open to the public, and acknowledged
the challenge in finding the proper line between transparency and
confidentiality.

“We have plenty of work to do to increase transparency in science, and
rid it of inappropriate influence,” he wrote. “But that doesn’t mean we
should scan every handwritten note, record every phone call, or publish
every e-mail.”

An industrious graph-maker (Australian, Ken Stewart) has just turned
the latest UAH (satellite) data into a series of graphs, with different
graphs for various regions of the world. That supposedly "global"
warming was not showing up in his local area was what got him blogging.

So
his latest graphs follow on neatly from something I pointed out
yesterday: That it is absurd to speak of "global" warming at a
time when some parts of the globe are in fact cooling. I offered
only the authority of my Crepe Myrtle trees for that observation but our
industrious blogger offers the satellite evidence on that. He
shows that the trend lines differ from one another in the 11 areas he
singles out.

I reproduce below only three of his graphs but I
think they are the ones of greatest interest: Graphs for the
globe, the USA and Australia. He shows that the pause has lasted 18
years and 10 months in the USA but in Australia it has lasted 20 years
and 11 months.

UAH v6.0 data for February have been released. Here are updated graphs
for various regions showing the furthest back one can go to show a zero
or negative trend (less than +0.1C/ 100 years) in lower tropospheric
temperatures. Note: The satellite record commences in
December 1978- now 37 years and 3 months long- 447 months. 12
month running means commence in November 1979.

Despite the record TLT for February, I am sorry to disappoint GWEs that
The Pause has not disappeared. In some regions it has lengthened,
in others it has shortened, and in the Northern Extra-Tropics it has
disappeared (by my criterion)- but mostly it has remained at the same
length.

Pesky! Analysis Finds No Correlation Between Glacier Melt And CO2, Melting Much Slower Today Than 1930s!

According to the below graph (Fig. 2 a) found in Gregory et al., 2013 in
Journal of Climate (“Twentieth-Century Global-Mean Sea Level Rise: Is
the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts?”), there was a very
substantial increase in the glacier and ice sheet melt contribution to
sea level rise in the early 20th century, reaching up to 2 mm/year sea
level rise equivalent.

Source: Gregory et al., 2013 in Journal of Climate

In recent years, the documented rise in sea levels contributed from
glacier and ice sheet melt has not come close to reaching the high
levels attained during the 1920s and 1930s period as documented by
Gregory et al., 2013.

For example according to Shepherd et al., 2012 (see below), the total
ice sheet melt contribution from the Antarctic (AIS) and Greenland (GIS)
ice sheets combined was 0.59 mm/year (~2.3 inches per century) during
the 1992-2011 period and the total ice sheet or glacier melt from all
other land sources (not the AIS or GIS) was 0.41 mm/year (~1.6 inches
per century) for 2003 to 2010 according to Jacob et al., 2012 (see
below).

Together, the total melt contribution from global land ice was about 1
mm/year (~4 inches per century) through the first decade of the 21st
century, which is still well below the melt rates achieved during the
1920s and 1930s.

Interestingly, during the 1920s to 1930s period of very high glacier
melt rate contributions to sea level rise, human CO2 emissions were flat
and only averaged about 1 GtC/year (see graph below).

In contrast, during the 1990s to 2010/2011 period, CO2 emissions rates reached 6 to 9 GtC/year.

Unanswered question

If anthropogenic CO2 emissions are truly driving ice sheet and glacier
melt contributions to sea level rise, why was the melt contribution
significantly higher during the 1920s and 1930s when CO2 emissions rates
were flat and about 1/6th to 1/9th of what they’ve been in recent
years?

Until last week, the greatest collective flight from reality in the
history of British politics was that brought about by Ed Miliband’s 2008
Climate Change Act

Just when we think the world can’t get any madder, along comes something
to show that we haven’t yet seen the half of it (who, three years ago,
could have predicted the rise of Isil or Donald Trump?). Another such
moment came last Monday when our energy minister Andrea Leadsom told MPs
that the Government now believes that we should “enshrine” in law the
“Paris goal” of cutting our emissions of CO2 to “zero”.

"This 80 per cent figure was at the last minute plucked from the air by
Mr Miliband, on the advice of a young lady called Bryony Worthington..."

As we know, arguably the greatest collective flight from reality in the
history of British politics was that brought about by Ed Miliband’s 2008
Climate Change Act, which committed Britain, alone in the world, to
cutting its “carbon emissions” by 80 per cent. Anyone with a shred of
common sense would have known that, with fossil fuels still providing
(according to the latest government figures) 84 per cent of all our
energy – including 70 per cent of our electricity and pretty well 100
per cent of our transport – while renewable wind, sun and hydro supply
less than 2 per cent, it was not entirely rational to set ourselves a
goal that could only be reached by closing down virtually our entire
economy.

Yet this 80 per cent figure was at the last minute plucked from the air
by Mr Miliband, on the advice of a young lady called Bryony Worthington,
previously the climate change campaign director for Friends of the
Earth, who had been invited to draft an Act which was then supported by
all but five of our MPs.
When Mrs Leadsom announced that the Government now wishes to raise that
80 per cent figure to 100 per cent, she offered fulsome thanks to Ed
Miliband and the now Baroness Worthington for suggesting it.

She was promptly congratulated by the Green MP Caroline Lucas, whose
only reservation was that the Government should also commit itself to
producing 100 per cent of our electricity from “renewables”. But even
Mrs Leadsom realises that there are times when the wind doesn’t blow and
the sun doesn’t shine – so that to keep our lights on, it might be
advisable, as a “transitional approach to decarbonisation”, to build a
few more gas-fired power stations. But no one is any longer willing to
do this, because it would scarcely pay to invest in plants the
Government would soon wish to see closed down anyway.

So it seems that Mrs Leadsom is also still pinning her hopes of keeping
our economy functioning on two more pipe dreams. One is that plan to get
the French to build easily the most expensive nuclear plant in the
world at Hinkley Point, which seems to get more dodgy with every month
that passes.

The other is the even more costly plan to bribe a few gas-fired power
stations to continue running, so long as all their CO2 emissions are
piped off to be buried in holes under the North Sea, by a technology not
yet developed and which almost certainly never will be.

So carried away into cloud cuckoo land have been all those responsible
for our energy policy that Mrs Leadsom now proposes that we should go
literally for broke. If our existing policy is like committing suicide
by taking ever larger doses of paracetamol, she now wants us to make
doubly sure by knocking back a cup of cyanide.

What makes this even more bizarre is that, in doing so, she somehow
believes that our “world-leading Climate Change Act” will set an example
for all other countries to follow. She wants Britain to be the first to
meet that wholly fictitious “Paris goal”, by reducing our greenhouse
gas emissions to zero. She conveniently forgets that the Paris agreement
committed no one to anything.

China, India and many other countries are planning to build hundreds
more coal-fired power stations (of which we will soon have none at all),
in a way that will guarantee a further huge leap in the world’s “carbon
emissions”, to which our own contribution is now only 1.2 per cent. At
least when lemmings jump over a cliff, they are all supposed to do it
together. Mrs Leadsom and the rest of our politicians seem happy that we
should be the only one.

The world's first "Green" political party to come to power was the
Nazi party so I suppose we should not be surprised at the
craziness. The latest example: German PV Power Costs 50 Cents To
Produce, Gets Less Than 4 Cents On The Market!

Germany’s Federal Ministry for Commerce And Energy (BMWi) presents a
brochure every year with the feed-in act in figures. The brochure lists
the costs of the Energiewende (energy transition) in detail. Germany’s
EEG feed-in act total subsidy for supporting the Energiewende and
expanding renewable energies in 2014 cost approx. 24 billion euros. In
2015 the cost is projected to be some 27 billion euros. From the BMWi
figures, it is clear that the major cost driver in Germany’s
Energiewende is photovoltaic power.

The following table lists the photovoltaic (PV) power produced in the
years 2000-2015 (which was subsidized by the EEG), the average EEG
subsidy per kilowatt-hour of solar energy 2000-2015, and the total EEG
subsidy for solar energy for PV power ín billions of euros 2000-2015.

The total EEG subsidies paid for PV power rose from 0.015 billion euros
in 2000 to almost 11 billion euros in 2015! This is increase is
completely due to the installation of total PV capacity shown by the
blue bars in the following chart.

The red bars in the above chart show the total subsidies paid each year
for PV power. 2015 will see close to 11 billion euros paid in subsidies
to support solar power. The heavy black line shows the amount of new
installations. New PV installations have trailed off since subsidies for
solar energy were scaled back in 2012.

Total installed photovoltaic capacity in Germany has risen from 1 GW in
2003 to almost 40 GW today. The average EEG subsidy for PV power has
fallen from 50 cents per kilowatt hour to 30 cents today. Thus the
addition of PV capacity continues to surpass the significantly reduced
EEG subsidy for PV power, which means total subsidies doled out continue
to rise.

With 11 billion euros, PV is the major cost driver of the Energiewende,
and accounts for 40% of the total EEG subsidies of 27 billion euros to
be paid out this year.

For the 11 billion euros in subsidies, about 1 billion euros of power is
actually marketed. That means the subsidies cost a net 10 billion euros
annually, which power consumers are forced to pay. That turns out to be
about 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. For an average household that means
about 90 euros per year in extra costs.

For the photovoltaic producers, it’s a great business: Many get 50 cents
per kilowatt hour (guaranteed 20 years) while the same kilowatt gets
sold for only 3 to 4 cents on the market.

Read here to see the impact this has had on German CO2 emissions (none). Is this insanity, or not?

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

21 March, 2016

Woe is me!

I forgot that it was Earth Hour in Australia on 19th. You "save
the planet" by turning off all your lights for one hour,
allegedly. In my evil planet-destroying way, I normally make a
point of turning on every light in the house on Earth hour but missed
doing that this time. I had some lights on but not enough

Another personal gripe I have mentioned a few times concerns the fact
that Warmists are having orgasms about the recent rise in average
temperature in some places on earth. This has been translated to
give a global average that is higher than usual. But that higher
temperature is NOT global. How do I know that? My Crepe
Myrtle (botanically "Lagerstroemia") trees tell me that. Crepe
Myrtles produce a great mass of blossom in various colors when they
flower and Brisbane people really like flowering trees. They are
everywhere in Brisbane: Jacarandas, Poincianas and Crepe Myrtles, plus
others.

The catch is that Crepe Myrtles originate in warm regions of India and
are heat sensitive. They blossom reliably only in the
tropics. When I lived in the tropics, we called them Christmas
bushes because they came out just before Christmas in December. In
the subtropics where I now live, however, the warm weather is slower to
arrive and they normally blossom in January. And this year my
eight trees did not blossom at all. So my locality experienced COOLING
at the same time that global warming was being proclaimed.

So does that show anything? It does. It shows that the
"smashing" temperature rise proclaimed by Jim Hansen was in fact so weak
that it coincided with cooling in some places. It was not a
"global" temperature rise at all. It was only a rise in some
places. That is all one can accurately say about it

Below is part of what I saw when I looked out my backdoor in January, 2015: 17 metres of blossom right across my backyard

How to explain the LACK of extreme weather events?

Warmists model their little hearts out trying to link various extreme
weather events to global warming. But what about the extreme
weather events that have become LESS frequent? How do we explain
them? Is the loss of extreme events caused by global warming
too? I'm guessing that Warmists will indeed say that.
After all, EVERYTHING is explained by global warming. Paul
Homewood below sets out what a big task lies before them

Unable to persuade the public that a slightly warmer world is a bad
thing, the climate establishment has turned to peddling the myth that
global warming is leading to more extreme weather.

There have been a number of studies which have attempted to connect the two. Even then, as I showed
with the above AMS attempt a few months ago, most extreme events cannot
be linked, and those that are claimed to be are extremely tenuous.

Of course, weather is an impossibly complex affair, and it is inevitable
that some weather events may be made more likely or more intense in a
warmer world. But, equally, the opposite is also true – that some events
are less likely. Naturally, we never hear the absence of extreme
weather analysed in this way by the likes of the AMS or Met Office.

So, I invite them to have a go at these examples:

Hurricanes

US land falling hurricanes have been at record low levels in recent
years, and it is now more than ten years since a major hurricane hit.

As with drought indicators, US rainfall has tended to be greater since
the pre 1970 period. There is no indication, however, of
precipitation becoming more extreme since then. The wettest year was
1973.

National totals can, of course, cover up regional imbalances.The NOAA
chart below shows the balance of extremely wet and dry areas. As with
PDSI, very dry areas are much less common, while the area of very wet
weather is stable.

(NOAA’s graph is not well presented; although it says “December”, it is
in fact for all months since 1895. Each bar represents a single month)

Coal waste can be converted to useful energy, if the EPA would just get out of the way.

Lately, Congress has been taking some significant steps to push back
against federal regulatory agencies. Regulations cost our economy $2
trillion a year, and are written and enforced by unelected bureaucrats
with no accountability to voters. They undermine property rights,
representative government and the rule of law, and its high time someone
did something about it.

Yesterday, I wrote about Joni Ernst’s bill to put a moratorium on new
regulations between the election and the swearing in of the new
Congress, a time when lawmakers are notoriously unaccountable to voters
and uninterested in fighting any difficult fights. Today, the House of
Representatives voted on a bill authored by Rep. Keith Rothfus (R-PA-12)
to rein in some of the EPA’s emissions standards on coal refuse plants.

Coal refuse plants work by using the discarded remnants of coal
production, transforming them into steam energy. From both an
environmental standpoint, and based on consumer needs, this is
preferable to simply letting coal refuse sit around and take up space.
However, the EPA has issued strict emissions standards on coal refuse
plants that make them difficult to operate, and in many cases,
unprofitable.

Rothfus’ bill, known as the SENSE Act, would loosen emission
requirements on these types of plants, would clarify that plants can
only be forced to comply with one standard, as opposed to several
competing simultaneous standards, and allows alternative means for
plants to comply.

Supporters of the bill argue that it will save jobs in the energy
sector, and will help the environment by allowing for a productive use
of coal refuse, which was previously nothing more than useless waste.

All this may seem like a relatively small advance in the battle against
overregulation, but the mere fact that Congress is starting to wake up
to the need to take action is encouraging. THe nature of regulations is
that agencies rarely put forward sweeping packages that enact major
changes all at once. It happens, of course, but far more often, agencies
promulgate dozens of small rules that it’s difficult for individuals to
really care about. It’s a fiendish strategy designed to neutralize
grassroots action and make the messaging war for small government
advocates more difficult.

That’s why it’s so important for Congress to remain vigilant, and
exercise its constitutional power of the purse to rein in these agencies
and protect the American economy from overregulation. THe House passed
Rothfus’ bill by a vote of 231-183, and it will now be transmitted to
the Senate.

The dozens of e-mails we send every day and the text messages from our
smartphones are contributing to global warming. And we are not even
aware how.

In isolation, these discrete units of our virtual existence seem
weightless and without cost. A short email, for example, is estimated to
add about four grammes (0.14 ounces) of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) into the
atmosphere.

By comparison, humanity emits some 40 billions tonnes of CO2 every year.

But as the digital era deepens, the accumulated volume of virtual
messages has become a significant part of humanity’s carbon footprint.
“Electricity consumption related to the growth of digital technologies
is exploding,” notes Alain Anglade of the French Environment and Energy
Management Agency.

In France it already accounts for more than 10 percent of total
electricity use, he said, a percentage that holds for many developed
countries.

Sending five dozen of those four-gramme emails in a day from your
smartphone or laptop, for example, is the equivalent of driving an
average-size car a kilometre (0.6 miles).

The culprits are greenhouse gases produced in running the computer,
server and routers, but also include those emitted when the equipment
was manufactured.

Add a 1-megabyte (MB) attachment -- a photo or invitation, say -- and
the energy consumed would be enough to power a low-wattage lightbulb for
two hours.

If that email is sent to a mailing list, multiply by the number of recipients.

Even not being too verbose is helpful -- the carbon counter is running
as someone reads your long-winded missive about that trip to Disney
World.

And then there’s spam, the notorious canned ham that became a byword for unsolicited advertising.

Anti-virus software maker McAfee estimated that upward of 60 trillion
spams are sent each year, generating the same greenhouse gas emissions
as three million cars using 7.5 billion litres (two million gallons) of
petrol.

Even no-frills SMS text messages -- like the tiniest of atoms -- are not
without mass, weighing in at about 0.014 grammes of CO2e.

And e-readers are not necessarily more eco-friendly than old-fashioned books.

It takes about a kilo of CO2e to make an airport paperback, but at least 200 times as much to manufacturer an e-reader.

That means you would need to read no less than 70 books a year for three
years on a digital device to be “carbon neutral” compared to a book.

Philippine church groups believe in global warming so it must be right

The Third world is very much at the mercy of First world fads

Church groups in the Philippines called on environmental advocates to
seriously work for a "productive environment and climate justice" to
address the roots of global warming and to bring about strategic and
lasting solutions.

"People rise up, speak out and take concrete actions," read the March 16 statement from the group Stewards of Creation.

The group issued the statement following this week's Climate Reality
Project event led by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore in Manila.

The Stewards of Creation noted that the Philippines has been on the
receiving end of extreme weather conditions resulting in super typhoons
and long droughts.

In the 2016 Climate Change Vulnerability Index, released by risk
analysis company Verisk Maplecroft, the Philippines ranked 13th among
the most climate-vulnerable countries.

With the onslaught of this year's dry season, the country expects crop losses and lower livestock and poultry production.

Jose Arnel Aguilar, spokesman of Stewards of Creation, noted that world
leaders have failed to address the root causes of climate change.

"After more than two decades of climate summits ... the poorest and most
vulnerable people remain at the margins, experiencing not only an
inconvenient truth but a harsh and dangerous reality," said Aguilar.

In the central Philippine city of Cebu, environmental groups band with
the church and educational institutions to amplify their call for
discussion of environmental agendas during the election campaigns of
presidential candidates for this year's elections.

The Concerned Cebuanos for the Environment, a newly formed group, said
the environmental issue is an "urgent and important cornerstone platform
and agenda."

"It's high time that politicians prioritize a green agenda and ensure
implementation," said Sister Virgie Ligaray of the Association of Women
Religious of Cebu.

Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday called on Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton to apologize for questionable comments she recently made
about killing coal industry jobs:

“I think she should apologize. She should apologize
to every Kentucky worker that’s lost their job in recent times because
of her policies,” he said in a video, which was uploaded by Kentucky
news site CN2. “I’m calling today for Hillary Clinton to apologize for
all of Kentucky for these outrageous comments.” ...

Paul added that her remarks were a “brazen comment”
that showed “casual disregard for hardworking Kentucky coal miners — for
them losing their jobs because of Hillary Clinton’s policies.”

At a CNN town hall on Sunday, Clinton proclaimed that she’s “going to
put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” in her
effort to move America toward “clean renewable energy.” The remark has
drawn criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike who represent
Appalachian communities reliant on the coal industry.

Clinton tried to clarify her position in a letter sent to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) earlier this week.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

20 March, 2016

Blame global warming, New Zealand is losing glaciers

More lies below, and obvious ones at that. From Wikipedia: "The
Franz Josef glacier ... exhibits a cyclic pattern of advance and
retreat, driven by differences between the volume of meltwater at the
foot of the glacier and volume of snowfall feeding the névé. The
glacier advanced rapidly during the Little Ice Age, reaching a maximum
in the early eighteenth century. Having retreated several kilometres
between the 1940s and 1980s, the glacier entered an advancing phase in
1984 and at times has advanced at the phenomenal (by glacial standards)
rate of 70 cm a day"

New Zealand is renowned for its wondrous scenery, and among the
country's top tourist attractions are two glaciers that are both
stunning and unusual because they snake down from the mountains to a
temperate rain forest, making them easy for people to walk up to and
view.

But the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have been melting at such a rapid
rate that it has become too dangerous for tourists to hike onto them
from the valley floor, ending a tradition that dates back a century.

With continuing warm weather this year there are no signs of a
turnaround, and scientists say it is another example of how global
warming is impacting the environment.

Tourism in New Zealand is booming and nearly 1 million people last year
flocked to get a glimpse of the glaciers and the spectacular valleys
they've carved. But the only way to set foot on them now is to get flown
onto them by helicopter.

Tour operators offer flights and guided glacier walks, although
logistics limit this to 80,000 tourists per year, half the number that
once hiked up from the valley floor.

Up to another 150,000 people each year take scenic flights that land briefly at the top of the glaciers.

Flying in the Unesco World Heritage area comes with its own risks,
highlighted in November when a sightseeing helicopter crashed onto the
Fox Glacier, killing all seven aboard.

Sitting near the base of the Franz Josef Glacier, Wayne Costello, a
district operations manager for the department of conservation, said
that when he arrived eight years ago, the rock he was perched on would
have been buried under tons of ice. Instead, the glacier now comes to an
end a half-mile (800 meters) further up the valley.

"Like a loaf of bread shrinking in its tin, it's gone down a lot as
well," Costello said. "So it's wasted away in terms of its thickness,
and that's led to quite a rapid melt."

Because of that melt, the valley walls that were once braced by the
glaciers have been left exposed and vulnerable to rock falls, making
hiking up too dangerous. Tour operators stopped taking guided hikes onto
the Franz Josef in 2012 and the nearby Fox in 2014.

A 2014 paper published in the journal Global and Planetary Change
concluded the two glaciers have each melted by 3 kilometres in length
since the 1800s, making them about 20 percent shorter.

The glaciers have recently been melting at a faster pace than ever previously recorded, the authors said.

More evidence that the recent global temperature uptick is not the result of human activities

The Cape Grim figures show that CO2 levels have been static during
the recent temperature uptick and these new figures below show the same
thing. But if CO2 figures have been static, they cannot have been
driving a temperature uptick. These latest CO2 emission figures are
probably a bit shaky, but no more so than other climate-related
figures. At least there seems to be no evidence that they are
massaged, unlike temperature data from NOAA and GISS

Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions held steady for the
second year in a row while the economy grew, according to the
International Energy Agency.

In a simple, two-column spreadsheet released yesterday, IEA showed that
the world’s energy sector produced 32.14 metric gigatons of carbon
dioxide in 2015, up slightly from 32.13 metric gigatons in 2014.
Meanwhile, the global economy grew more than 3 percent.

Analysts credited the rise of renewables—clean energy made up more than
90 percent of new energy production in 2015—for keeping greenhouse gas
emissions flat.

“The new figures confirm last year’s surprising but welcome news: we now
have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling
from economic growth,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in a
press release. “Coming just a few months after the landmark COP21
agreement in Paris, this is yet another boost to the global fight
against climate change.”

IEA, an energy cooperative and research firm with 29 member countries,
has tracked global greenhouse gas emissions for 40 years and in that
time witnessed only three other periods when global emissions fell, each
associated with an economic recession.

The findings challenge assumptions that billowing smokestacks are
harbingers of growing economies. They also indicate that a similar
report last year was not a fluke but part of a larger trend of
decoupling emissions from growth.

Mixed reactions greeted the findings.

Doug Vine, a senior energy fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy
Solutions, said IEA’s announcement echoes past trends within many
developed nations in which gross domestic product grew much faster than
greenhouse gas emissions.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) held a large snowball during a Senate floor
speech early last year to parody believers in global warming. In 2012,
his book was titled “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming
Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”

So it might be surprising that in the 2016 Republican presidential
primary Inhofe announced this week he is behind Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Even when the field was 17 strong, Kasich was the only GOP candidate who
said climate change is a problem and humans have something to do with
it.

In a debate in March, Kasich said, “I do believe we contribute to climate change.”

Last month, campaigning in South Carolina, Kasich asked rhetorically,
“Am I not a conservative because I think human beings affect the
climate? I’m for the environment.”

Kasich has made similar comments numerous other times but has never supported cap-and-trade legislation backed by Democrats.

So what could prompt Inhofe to back Kasich for president when the senator doesn’t believe the science is settled?

“[Inhofe] believes the climate is changing, as it always has been, but
he does not believe man is the driver of that change,” Inhofe spokesman
Donelle Harder told TheBlaze. “Gov. Kasich has said time and again that
the ‘EPA is too punitive’ and that he would ‘scrap’ the Clean Power
Plan.”

Further, Harder notes that Kasich believes fossil fuels would always be part of the American economy.

“Inhofe, having a personal relationship with Kasich, knows he is a man
of his word and believes Kasich would follow through on his plans to
rein EPA in and overturn economically harmful climate regulations,”
Harder said

The personal relationship, which began when the two men served together
in Congress, seems to have played a key role in the endorsement.

“During this time, I also attended a weekly Bible study with him for
eight years,” Inhofe said in a statement announcing the endorsement.
“You learn a lot about a person when you attend a Bible study together,
so I can tell you personally that he is a man of his word. When he
talked, people listened. Now the country is listening to his message of
optimism and results.”

Kasich is generally characterized as a moderate in the race against
front-runner Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. However, Inhofe has
scored well in conservative rankings, with a 92 percent score by the
American Conservative Union and a 74 percent liberty score by
Conservative Review.

Global Warming Hiatus To Be Investigated In Multidisciplinary Research Project

A bit hard to know what to make of this but it appears that some govrernment scientists have kept an open mind

After recent research pointed to data discrepancies as the cause of the
global warming hiatus that many in the field debate, scientists from the
U.K.'s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) are planning to investigate
the issue and determine why the global warming trend varies from decade
to decade. The NOC will work alongside researchers from nine other
organizations, which marks the start of a major new multidisciplinary
research project.

The NOC claims that a slowdown has been observed in the global warming
of the Earth's surface over the last decade, although they note that
despite this decrease, heat is still increasing in other parts of the
climate system, such as the deep ocean.

The new project, called Securing Multidisciplinary Understanding and
Prediction of Hiatus and Surge events (SMURPHS), will investigate the
potential causes of this slowdown including volcanic activity, solar
radiation and greenhouse gases, among others, and determine the impacts
that each of these factors have on the variation in global warming.

NOC scientists previously observed that the absorption of heat by the
North Atlantic, Tropical Pacific and Southern Oceans plays a key role in
the recent global warming slowdown. In addition to the factors
mentioned above, the team plans on continuing to investigate the role of
the ocean in global warming variability

Global warming is viewed by most environmental scientists as one of the
Earth's most important problems, but so far, effective policies to
address it have had mixed results. The new study aims to uncover why the
rate of surface warming varies so much by the decade and use the
findings to better inform government policies regarding climate change
adaptation.

Despite the global warming slowdown observed over the recent years, some
claim that the "hiatus" has been broken by the weather phenomenon El
Niño, pointing to the recent warm surge as evidence.

A compromise proposal to boost solar power development in Maine 12-fold
over five years is being opposed by Gov. Paul LePage, casting a shadow
over the hopes of clean-energy advocates and setting the stage for a
fight in the Legislature.

The proposal, which is being drafted into a bill, has won the support of
interest groups that don’t often see eye to eye. They include solar
installers, Maine’s Office of Public Advocate and the state’s two
investor-owned utilities, Central Maine Power Co. and Emera Maine. They
are backing a plan that they say would create an estimated 800 jobs and
help all ratepayers.

But staffers at LePage’s energy office who have participated in
negotiations on the compromise have reached a different conclusion. They
say the plan maintains subsidies for homeowners who install
solar-electric panels on their rooftops at levels that hurt other
ratepayers.

“We’re not opposed to solar,” said Lisa Smith, a senior planner in the
energy office. “But we’re looking out for the cost to all ratepayers. We
were in favor of a mechanism that went in a market-based direction, but
this isn’t it.”

Critics and backers are preparing to make their cases next week, at a
yet-to-be-scheduled public hearing before the Legislature’s Energy,
Utilities and Technology Committee.

Government support and falling equipment prices have sent solar
installations soaring across the country. The federal Energy Information
Administration estimates that large, utility-scale solar projects being
proposed this year will exceed the generation of any other single
energy source.

New England is sharing in this movement, particularly in states where
policies encourage solar energy. But in Maine, clean-energy advocates
lament the lack of rebates and incentives, driven by LePage’s view that
homeowners who can afford the upfront cost of installing solar panels
are benefiting from the rates that power companies charge all of their
customers to maintain the grid.

Advocates counter that the governor isn’t taking into account how all
Mainers would benefit from solar power because of things such as cleaner
air and job creation.

Several hundred academics and staff members at Australian National
University signed an open letter requesting the school jettison its oil
and gas assets, even as the school promises to table the measure, citing
the need to keep the school financially stable.

The ANU letter calls on the university to make its fossil fuel assets
transparent, as well as ending whatever oil assets the school currently
has by 2021.

Activist with Fossil Free, a group associated with the controversial
environmentalist Bill McKibben, delivered the letter signed by 450 staff
and academics to the school’s vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt.

The University currently has $43 million sunk in fossil fuel assets,
according to Fossil Free spokeswoman and ANU student Zoe Neumayer, which
would place it among a handful of universities gathering more than $40
million in fossil fuel assets.

Among those rebuking the divestment charge are Harvard University, which
has $107.8 million in fossil fuel assets, as well as Yale University,
with a lofty oil and coal asset portfolio of $51.09 million.

"(We believe) the ANU needs to divest from fossil fuels in order to
properly be a global climate leader," Neumayer told reporters Tuesday,
noting also that nearly 82 percent of students voted for divestment

The University Council’s decision to table the open letter comes two
years after the school divested shares in 7 mining companies.

ANU moved in 2014 to purge assets from Australia mining companies Santos
and Iluka Resources, following calls from independent groups for the
school to become more socially responsible.

Officials condemned the move at the time.

"Sadly, no, the universities govern themselves. But I think to suggest
that companies like Santos and Iluka, which are both excellent
companies, are somehow not ethical investments is a bizarre decision,"
Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne, told reporters.

That was then, this is now.

Schmidt, an astrophysicist who was recently appointed the school’s vice
chancellor and an avowed proponent of fighting the advent of man-made
global warming — said he still recognizes the school has
responsibilities to its faculty and staff.

"The council has to balance both its fiduciary responsibilities to
provide the funds for students and staff needs, such as superannuation
payments and student scholarships, with that of socially responsible
investments," he said.

Schmidt added: "It is a complex issue, and both the council and I
welcome the views of staff and students." He said the school would
continue to fight global warming despite ANU’s decision to table
requests to divest.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

18 March, 2016

February global temperature rise proves nothing

The shrill article below is panicking over February temperatures so I
suppose I should point out a few obvious things. I have really
dealt with this nonsense before but a few comments anyway.

For
a start, hanging anything on the figures for one month is dumb.
You can have unusually hot months in a year where there is no overall
change. Even figures for one year are rubbery. Figures for
years can go up and down but still show no overall trend. You need
a trend over a period of years to conclude anything. 2015 was a
touch warmer but 2016 could be a touch cooler overall. If we get
an early return of La Nina, the later months of 2016 could be cool in
the same way that the early months were warm. That's all
elementary stuff -- even if it is conspicuously overlooked below.

It
was a bit boring writing all that freshman-level stuff above but I was
listening to some Stravinsky while I wrote it so that kept me alert and
happy

But now to get onto the specifics about February 2016: According to NOAA (See here)
The February 2016 temperature was 5.69°F above the C20 average.
That seems a lot. One can understand it being called
"whopping". But wait a minute. 2005 was 4.12°F above the
same average. Was that "whopping" too? Did that presage
climate catastrophe? Ten years later we can say that it clearly
didn't. And February 2015 was -0.85°F -- BELOW average. Did
that warn of an oncoming ice age? Clearly not. Hanging your
hat on one month is brick thick. I really shouldn't have to point out
what excreta the article below is. Temperatures fluctuate but
there is no statistically significant long-term trend.

So Feb
2016 was a bit higher than 2005. Why? Easy: El Nino. Despite
what is said below, it was in fact TOTALLY due to El Nino. How do I
know that? Because it was NOT due to a rise in CO2. The
recent temperature rises did not fit neatly into any one year.
They were concentrated in late 2015 and early 2016, And that is
PRECISELY a period over which CO2 levels plateaued. From August
2015 to February 2016, CO2 levels have been stuck on 398 ppm, according
to the Cape Grim data.
CO2 levels over that period only varied by less than one part per
million. Annual changes before that were around 2 parts per
million.

The big Warmist story is that warming is due to CO2
levels. If that were so, the recent rise in temperature would be a
mirror of rising CO2 levels. But the CO2 levels belie that. They
didn't rise. Once again temperature and CO2 are disconnected. So
El Nino is the only explanation left for the recent temperature
uptick. It is an entirely natural fluctuation with nothing to do
with human actions. That's what the data tells us. Do look
up the Cape Grim data yourself to check it

February shattered climate records, scientists worried we could see 2C warming within months.

Does everybody still believe global warming is a hoax? Yet more data
confirms what scientists have feared for a long time, the planet is
warming, and it may have passed a tipping point. The latest data now
reveals that February 2016 was the hottest February on record, and it
blew that record by a wide margin.

February is a cold month, especially in the northern hemisphere, so it's
surprising to see that it was so hot. And hot is the right word to use.
According to climate data, the entire northern hemisphere was 2.43
degrees Fahrenheit hotter than average, and a full third of a
degree hotter than the record.

Whens peaking of climate records, it is common to deal in tenths or even
hundredths of a degree. To see a third of a degree, or, in this case,
nearly two-and-a-half degrees, overall, is literally unprecedented.
February 2016 is the first month in history that global average
temperatures exceeded the 1.5 degree (Celsius) average.

Scientists also noted that the warmth was unusually concentrated in the
Arctic, contributing to record ice melt and likely weather anomalies.

While El Nino can be blamed for some of the weather anomalies for
2015-2016, global warming also has a major role to play in both El Nino
and overall temperature rise. Also, EL Nino, despite its hype, is
only responsible for a tenth of a degree Celsius rise in years when it
occurs, which means the additional 1.2C degrees of warming cannot be
attributed to the Pacific weather phenomenon.

The heart of the problem is simple thermodynamics. The planet is
absorbing more radiation from the Sun than it is putting back out into
space, resulting in a slow warming trend. The additional radiation is
stored as heat, both in the atmosphere and in the oceans. Part of the
reason for this imbalance appears to be rising carbon dioxide (CO2)
levels. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas, which traps heat.
The increased heat increases evaporation, and water vapor is an even
better store of heat energy, which causes yet more warming.

Scientists are alarmed because it has taken over a century to see the
planet warm a full 1 degree Celsius. Now, in the past five months, the
planet has warmed another half degree. Will we see 2 degrees before the
summer is though? It's an alarming thought.

According to the most pessimistic global warming hypothesis, once the
planet sees 2 degrees Celsius of average global warming, the climate
trend will be virtually irreversible. The polar ice caps will melt,
resulting in sea level rise and destroying cities. Shifts in weather
patterns, as well as more extreme weather will destroy food crops and
render some regions nearly uninhabitable. Mass extinctions of many
species could occur.

These changes will impact humanity by forcing mass human migration,
while also disrupting food and water supplies. This means more conflict
and chaos overall.

Indeed, we have already seen the beginning of polar ice melts with
Arctic ice now the lowest it has ever been recorded for a winter season.
Animals, especially in the Arctic, are facing famine as food supplies
run low. Polar bears are dying off in large numbers. And people are
being impacted too. The warmer temperatures mean less snow and ice,
which is hurting people whose lives depend on the snow and ice. As
coastal villages thaw, erosion as well as a lack of food available for
hunting is creating challenges all around the Arctic.

In the tropics, scientists are alarmed because around the world, they're
observing the single greatest coral bleaching event in history.

Despite these well-documented changes, a hardcore of deniers continues
to dispute that anything unnatural is happening, insisting that either
humans are blameless, or that nothing unusual is happening at all.
However, to believe this requires the denial of the nearly unanimous
consensus of the scientific community.

Even climate skeptic Roy Spencer characterized the warming as "whopping."

Thousands of climate scientists around the world have no reason to lie
about this basic truth: humans are pumping greenhouse gasses into the
atmosphere with predictable effect. If we are to survive the future
without extreme climate disruption and mass extinctions, we need to
curtail emissions. Scientists are not getting rich off these
discoveries. However, the fossil fuel lobby, has been implicated in
pushing climate change skepticism. The scandal is such that authorities
in the U.S. have even discussed bringing suit against prominent deniers,
much the same way the government sued those who claimed cigarette
smoking wasn't harmful.

While few Americans would support such harsh action against climate
deniers, their work is producing a discernible harm, as our nation fails
to decisively tackle its own problems with CO2 emissions.

How hot does it have to get for us to see that the scientists are right?
How many species need to go extinct before we start to care? How high
does sea level need to rise before we act? How bad does global warming
have to impact your life before you change your attitude?

Much of the coast from Maine to Virginia is more likely to change than
to simply drown in response to rising seas during the next 70 years or
so, according to a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey. The
study is based on a new computer model that captures the potential of
the Northeast coast to change, driven by geological and biological
forces, in ways that will reshape coastal landscapes.

In a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change, the researchers
reported that 70 percent of the Northeast Atlantic Coast is made up of
ecosystems that have the capacity to change over the next several
decades in response to rising seas. For example, barrier islands may
migrate inland, build dunes, change shape, or be split by new inlets as
tides, winds, waves and currents sculpt their sands. Marshes trap
sediment and break down decaying plants into new soil, which may elevate
them sufficiently in some areas to keep pace with sea-level increases.

While most sea-level rise models that cover large areas show low-lying
coastal land converting to open water in coming decades, many of these
inundation models over-predict the land likely to submerge. The USGS
model, developed in collaboration with Columbia University’s Earth
Institute, produces a more nuanced picture of sea level rise as a mosaic
of dry land, wetlands, and open seas, rather than as a uniform response
across the landscape.

The USGS model is the first to factor in natural forces and make
detailed predictions from the 2020s through the 2080s over a large
coastal area, some 38,000 square kilometers (about 9.4 million acres).
It is an advance over most regional models, which project drowning as
the only outcome as the oceans rise. These are often referred to as
“bathtub models” and assume the coast is progressively submerged as sea
levels rise.

Projections from inundation models are straightforward: some coastal
land will remain above the levels of the rising seas and some will
drown. The new model includes the potential for dynamic coastal change
and shows where in response to future sea levels, coastal lands fall on a
continuum between dry land and open water.

“Geologists have always known that the coast has some potential for give
and take,” said lead author Erika Lentz, a research geologist at the
USGS Coastal and Marine Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
“But the standard bathtub models of sea level rise don’t reflect that.
This approach couples what we do know about these systems with what we
still need to learn—how different ecosystems may respond to different
sea-level rise scenarios— to estimate the odds that an area will persist
or change instead of simply drown.”

By casting results in terms of odds, the new model provides a more
accurate picture of sea-level rise vulnerability for informing
adaptation strategies and reducing hazards, the USGS researchers say.
They make it clear, however, that just because an area is less likely to
drown might not mean it is less vulnerable. “Our model results suggest
that even natural changes may pose problems,” Lentz said. “For example,
the likelihood that barrier islands will change could impact the
infrastructure and economies of coastal communities, and the barrier
islands or marshes may not protect coastal communities in the same way
they do today.”

In fact, the outcome is uncertain for the Northeast’s low-lying
developed coastlines, where seawalls, buildings and other immovable
structures thwart some natural processes. The model found the region’s
developed coastal lands lying 1 meter (about 3 1/2 feet) or less above
sea level will likely face a tipping point by the 2030s, when humans’
decisions about whether and how to protect each area will determine if
it survives or drowns.

A 2012 USGS study identified the densely populated region from Cape
Hatteras to Boston as a hot spot where seas are rising faster than the
global average, so land managers urgently need to understand how their
coastal landscape may change, said John Haines, coordinator of the USGS
Coastal and Marine Geology Program.

“The model allows us to identify vulnerable areas, and that information
can be very valuable to land managers as they consider whether to
protect, relocate or let go of certain assets,” Haines said. “Even when
the results are uncertain, it’s useful to know there’s a 50 percent
chance that an important habitat or infrastructure project may be lost
in a few decades.”

To come up with their model for the Northeastern United States, the
researchers mapped all coastal land between 10 meters (about 33 feet)
above sea level and 10 meters below it, from the Virginia-North Carolina
line to the Maine-Canada border. They factored in a variety of forces
that affect coastal change, from planetary phenomena like the movement
of Earth’s tectonic plates to local ones like falling groundwater levels
that cause land surfaces to sink. Looking at parcels of 30 meters by 30
meters—about the size of two NBA basketball courts side by side—they
weighed the balance of forces on each parcel.

Using scenarios that assume humans will continue adding moderate to high
levels of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through the 21st century,
the team projected global sea level rise for the 2020s through the
2080s, and applied that to the coast. The model then estimated the
likelihood, from 0 to 100 percent, that each parcel will persist above
sea level at the end of each decade.

Predictions for many parcels fell close to 50 percent in the first few
decades, a tossup between drowning and surviving. The uncertainty was
greatest when the researchers had to wrestle with more than one question
that can’t yet be definitively answered. Among them are, how fast will
seas rise, can coastal marshes make new soil quickly enough to stay
above the waves, and what engineering strategies will people use to
protect some shorelines?

“By building in our understanding of the sea level rise response of the
coastal landscape, we’re providing a more realistic picture of coastal
change in the Northeastern U.S. over the next several decades,” Lentz
said.

Plants may be better at acclimatising to rising temperatures and
contribute less to carbon dioxide in a warming world than some have
previously thought, a new study suggests.

"Maybe some of our models are over-predicting the degree to which plant
respiration will cause accelerating feedback that speeds up climate
change," said Professor Peter Reich, an ecologist and plant physiologist
from the University of Minnesota who led the study published today in
Nature.

Plants absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and release it when
they burn sugar to produce energy in a process known as respiration.

For every 10 degrees Celsius of temperature increase, plants are known
to double their rate of metabolism, which has led to fears that global
warming will trigger a positive-feedback loop, switching plants from
being a net carbon dioxide sink — absorbing more carbon dioxide than
they release — to becoming a net source of the warming gas.

According to Dr Reich, however, the jury is still out on how big this
problem is. "The best models on the planet disagree wildly about
what will happen in 40 or 50 years, with some saying that the land
surfaces will still be a strong sink, but others saying they will become
a big source," he said.

Part of the problem is there is a lack of basic science on plant
respiration, especially how plants acclimatise to changing environments.

As temperatures increase, the enzymes involved in metabolism work faster
so fewer enzymes and resources are needed to obtain the same amount of
energy, and less carbon dioxide is produced.

How well this acclimatisation occurs will determine when, and if, plants
switch from becoming a net sink to a net source of carbon dioxide.

To find out, the Dr Reich and his colleagues studied 10 North American
tree species exposed to temperatures that are 3.4C above normal over
several years in the field.

In their extensive analysis, which involved supplementary lab
experiments, Dr Reich and colleagues compared the respiration rate of
trees acclimatised to "warm" plots and controls acclimatised to "ambient
temperature" plots.

They found that for the given 3.4C above normal, plants that had
experienced the warming treatments increased respiration by only 5 per
cent, while the controls increased respiration by a whopping 23 per
cent.

Dr Reich said the findings reduce the likelihood that increased
respiration in plants in a warming world would make global warming
worse. "This turn-around from plants providing net sequestration to
becoming a net source of carbon dioxide will take a lot longer, if it
happens at all," he said.

Dr Reich said research with colleagues at the Western Sydney University
Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, where he is a scientific
adviser, has found that Australian eucalypt trees also acclimatise at
the same rate as the North American species.

He said the findings should apply to rainforest species, which have the
same "machinery" for respiration, however to be sure these species would
need to be tested.

The Obama administration withdrew its plan Tuesday to permit oil and gas
drilling off the southeast Atlantic coast, yielding to an outpouring of
opposition from coastal communities from Virginia to Georgia but
dashing the hopes and expectations of many of those states’ top leaders.

The announcement by the Interior Department surprised many. Interior
Secretary Sally Jewell said the move was chiefly driven by the
widespread concerns of coastal communities, as well as the military’s
reservations about permitting drilling near some of its largest
installations. The move also comes as oil prices have plunged to near
record lows, which could ease some of the political backlash.

“We heard from many corners that now is not the time to offer oil and
gas leasing off the Atlantic coast,” Jewell said. “When you factor in
conflicts with national defense, economic activities such as fishing and
tourism, and opposition from many local communities, it simply doesn’t
make sense to move forward with any lease sales in the coming five
years.”

The decision represents a reversal of President Obama’s previous
offshore drilling plans and comes as he is trying to build an ambitious
environmental legacy. It could also inject the issue into the 2016
presidential campaigns, as Republican candidates vow to expand drilling.

The Obama drilling plan, once completed, would be in place from 2017 to
2022, but a future administration could draft a new plan to allow
Atlantic drilling after that.

In January 2015, Obama drew the wrath of environmentalists and high
praise from the oil industry and Southeastern governors after the
Interior Department put forth a proposal that would have opened much of
the southeastern Atlantic coast to offshore drilling for the first time.

The proposal came after governors, state legislators and senators from
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia all expressed
support for the drilling. Lawmakers in the state capitals saw new
drilling as creating jobs and bolstering state revenue.

But the offshore drilling proposal, which was still in draft form and
was not to be finalized until later this year, provoked a backlash from
coastal communities including Norfolk, Va., which supports the world’s
largest naval base; Charleston, S.C.; and tiny tourist towns around
Myrtle Beach, S.C., and on the Outer Banks of N.C. More than 100 of
those coastal cities and towns signed resolutions asking Obama to shut
down plans for new drilling.

In addition, more than 80 East Coast state legislators and the owners of
about 1,000 coastal businesses have signed letters to Obama opposing
the drilling.

Interior Department officials said Tuesday that the Pentagon had
expressed reservations about allowing drilling in the vicinity of the
naval base.

The coastal opposition and inland support of the drilling was regional,
rather than partisan. In prominent coastal communities such as
Charleston, conservative Republicans such as Representative Mark
Sanford, a former governor, helped lead the vocal opposition to the
drilling. But inland in state capitals, Democrats such as Governor Terry
McAuliffe of Virginia have supported it.

Environmental groups and the oil industry have spent the past several
months lobbying in town halls and statehouses throughout the Southeast.
Officials from environmental groups such as Oceana also met with top
White House energy and environment officials to press their case.

Environmental groups and many coastal residents fear that opening the
Atlantic to drilling could lead to a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater
Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 people and sent
millions of gallons of oil to the shores of nearby states.

“It’s a great day for the Atlantic coast, our beaches, and the coastal
economy that depends on it,” said Rachel Richardson, director for the
drilling program at Environment America. “This moment has come because
Atlantic coast communities, businesses, and citizens have all spoken up
to protect their beaches, treasured marine life, and President Obama
listened.”

“If the Atlantic is taken out, that means there’s less of an opportunity
to invest in the US, and those dollars will flow overseas, and we’ll
hear more and more of that in the presidential election,” said Randall
Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association.

In a statement, the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, said:
“President Obama is so intent on solidifying his radical climate legacy
that he has backed out of his commitment to a large, bipartisan
coalition of state leaders. These states simply want to explore their
own energy potential, but the president’s reversal has disenfranchised
them of this chance. This is a lost opportunity for new jobs and
economic growth in these coastal states, not to mention much-needed
revenues for the federal Treasury.”

However, administration officials noted that the move to block drilling
comes as oil and gasoline prices have plunged to near record lows, and
as onshore oil and gas development has rapidly expanded.

The evangelical “creation care” movement professes to be pro-life and,
for the most part, rightly so. But some creation care advocates give
reason to wonder.

Case in point: the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) recently
launched a “Pro-Life Clean Energy Campaign,” promising to “organize half
a million pro-life Christians to participate” in efforts to curb
pollution by demanding a switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar. It
calls this campaign “pro-life” and says it will “free our children from
pollution all across America with 100% clean electricity from renewable
resources by 2030.”

Even if it were true that pollution from generating electricity from
fossil fuels endangers children—and modern pollution control
technologies and actual emission levels make this assertion
questionable—the reasoning is ethically fallacious.

The Bible makes a stark and fundamental distinction between intentional
and accidental killing. When God instructed Israel to provide “cities of
refuge” in the Promised Land, He said:

If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally without having hated him in
the past—as when someone goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut
wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips
from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies—he may flee to
[a city of refuge] and live, lest the avenger of blood … strike him
fatally, though the man did not deserve to die, since he had not hated
his neighbor in the past. …

But if anyone hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and attacks
him and strikes him fatally so that he dies, and he flees into one of
these cities, then the elders of his city shall send and take him from
there, and hand him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may die.
[Deuteronomy 19:4–6, 11–12]

Most legal systems today incorporate this fundamental ethical
distinction, as by distinguishing accidental killing from negligent
deaths, and intentional but not premeditated from premeditated homicide.
They typically inflict no criminal penalty on the first and graduated
penalties on the rest.

Some American evangelicals fail to make this distinction today. That
failure weakens the pro-life movement and their pro-life arguments.

Like most ethics professors, when Dr. Beisner taught ethics in seminary,
he made sure his students understood that proper ethical judgment
considers carefully both the intent and the outcome of our acts. EEN’s
campaign ignores that distinction and twists the facts about the
outcomes.

The campaign morally equates fossil fuel electricity generation with
abortion. However, the ethical differences between abortion and
pollution are glaring.

First, the intent differs. In abortion, the intent is to kill a baby. In
energy production, the intent is to provide energy that people need to
sustain life and health. Any pollution that is a byproduct of energy
production is an unintended risk—like the risk of an axe head flying off
while cutting wood.

Second, the factual outcomes differ. In abortion, the outcome of every
“successful abortion” is a dead baby. In energy production, the outcome
of the energy produced is enhanced human health, living standards, and
life spans. The effect of any pollution byproducts may be a slight
reduction in some people’s health—but certainly not enough to outweigh
the intended beneficial outcome. By contrast, the result of denying
people access to affordable electricity is often to reduce their living
standards, health, and life spans.

The term “pro-life” was coined in the 1970s to designate those who
sought to restrict abortion. That has been its primary meaning ever
since. To apply it to efforts to reduce the relatively small risks from
pollution from electricity energy generation in the United States is to
cheapen the term.

Moreover, EEN’s campaign does more than cheapen the term. Expanding on
efforts that it began four years ago with its “Mercury and the Unborn”
campaign, EEN’s current campaign continues the organization’s practice
of disseminating erroneous information about pollution.

EEN’s previous campaign claimed that mercury from power plant emissions
put 1 in 6 American infants at risk of “devastating … permanent brain
damage.” In reality, the number exposed to enough mercury to have
detectable effects was closer to 1 in 1,000; the risk was a delay in
neurological development so slight as to be detectable only by trained
specialists; and even that risk disappears in most children by age
seven. In no case does it exceed about a half-point reduction in IQ, a
difference common in identical twins raised in the same household.
Further, less than 5% of mercury in US air comes from power plants.

Ironically, implementing EEN’s demand for “100% clean electricity from
renewable resources by 2030” would likely impair human health or even
kill more people than the pollution it prevented. By raising the cost of
electricity, the mercury regulations alone are calculated to cost about
2,500 to 4,250 deaths per year. Getting 100% of our electricity from
“renewable sources” (basically wind and solar) would cost multiples
more. (The US Supreme Court ultimately struck down the Environmental
Protection Agency’s mercury regulation, for these and other reasons, but
EPA had already implemented it.)

Nonetheless, by morally equating the risks from power plant emissions
with abortion, EEN justified applauding members of Congress who
supported EPA’s proposed mercury regulation as “sensitive to pro-life
concerns”—and chastening members who opposed it as not “sensitive to
pro-life concerns.”

Whom did EEN applaud? Among the 13 members named, Senators Debbie
Stabenow and Carl Levin (both D-MI) both had 100% pro-abortion voting
records in the 110th Congress (2007–2008), and Senators Susan
Collins and Olympia Snowe (both R-ME) and David Pryor (D-AR) all had 78%
pro-abortion voting records. Only two of the 13, Sen. John Boozman
(R-AR) and Cong. Bob Latta (R-OH), had 100% pro-life voting records.

By broadening the definition of “pro-life” as it does, EEN obscures its
meaning. By describing people with 100% pro-abortion voting records as
“pro-life” solely because of their environmental views, EEN divides the
pro-life movement, extols suspect health claims, and ignores the
benefits of fossil fuels.

As a result, EEN makes it more difficult to identify and elect truly
pro-life people to office, and thereby postpones or prevents victory in
the long struggle to end the intentional slaughter of hundreds of
thousands of babies every year in the United States (over 52 million
since the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973).

Further, by presenting its environmental concerns as “pro-life,” EEN
draws activists away from truly pro-life work into environmental causes
tightly tied to the population control movement, which promotes abortion
all around the world. It also delays bringing reliable, affordable
electricity to billions who do not yet enjoy its wondrous benefits, and
thus prolongs their poverty, disease, and premature deaths. These
consequences are now so obvious and undeniable that promoting
anti-fossil fuel policies in poor nations amounts to reckless disregard
for human suffering and death—hardly a pro-life position.

Four years ago, more than 30 pro-life leaders signed a statement
repudiating EEN’s deceptive mercury campaign. Now concerned citizens can
join many more in signing a new statement condemning EEN’s deceptive
“Pro-Life Clean Energy Campaign” for the same reasons.

By all means, let us be good stewards of God’s creation. Let us seek
ways to reduce risks posed by pollution, while still providing the
abundant, affordable, dependable energy that is indispensable to lifting
entire societies out of abject poverty and enabling them to enjoy the
health and living standards we do.

And in seeking to reduce relatively small and unintentional risks, let
us not undermine the efforts of truly pro-life people to end the killing
of millions of babies here and abroad every year.

Via email

Another Climate Scientist Indicted for Financial Fraud

Here we go again. Daniel Alongi, a researcher/racketeer with the
Australian Institute of Marine Science — though he’s no longer listed on
its website — is facing trial for using a scheme to erroneously pocket
half a million dollars in taxpayer money that was supposedly being used
on climate change research. According to The Heartland Institute,
“Alongi has been indicted by the Australian government on charges of
defrauding taxpayers out of $556,000 in false expenses since 2008.
Alongi has already admitted to creating false invoices, credit card
statements, and e-mails to cover his misappropriation of funds.” As you
might expect, “Alongi’s indictment raises serious questions concerning
the credibility of his research,” Heartland adds. Meteorologist Anthony
Watts says, “If Alongi falsely claimed to have spent half a million
dollars on radioisotope testing, it would look pretty strange if he
didn’t produce any false test results, to justify the expenditure of all
that money.”

Any of this sound familiar? It should. Last October, House Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology chairman Lamar Smith opened a probe into
Institute of Global Environment and Society president Jagadish Shukla.
Mr. Shukla, you may remember, implored the White House to prosecute
climate dissenters. Not only was it an attack on free speech, it also
violated laws on government-funded institutions. As Rep. Smith pointed
out, “IGES appears to be almost fully funded by taxpayer money while
simultaneously participating in partisan political activity by
requesting a [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act]
investigation of companies and organizations that disagree with the
Obama Administration on climate change. In fact, IGES has reportedly
received $63 million from taxpayers since 2001, comprising over 98% of
its total revenue during that time.” The climate lobby is all about
taking care of the earth — after they’ve taken care of their wallets.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

17 March, 2016

A libertarian Warmist?

Isn't he pretty?

It seems that Jerry Taylor is one. He must be the only libertarian
advocating a new tax. He advocates a carbon tax in exchange for
wiping all other State and Federal Warmist regulations. And he
states clearly that he believes in urgent action to limit CO2. He
is a Warmist.

When he was at Cato he was a climate skeptic. He once compared
Warmists to Maoists. Now he calls skeptics "denialists". So how come the
big change? He set up his own thinktank in 2014 called the Niskanen center. It's stated objectives give the game away. An excerpt:

Established in 2014, the Niskanen Center is a libertarian 501(c)(3)
think tank that works to change public policy through direct engagement
in the policymaking process: developing and promoting proposals to
legislative and executive branch policymakers, building coalitions to
facilitate joint action, and marshaling the most convincing arguments in
support of our agenda. The Center’s main audience is the
Washington insiders – policy-oriented legislators, presidential
appointees, career civil servants in planning, evaluation and budget
offices, congressional committee staff, engaged academics, and interest
group analysts – who together decide the pace and direction of policy
change

He is getting on in years and he wants to be an insider. Warmists
are in power so he wants to be in there. The sniff of power is
what he wants. He wants to feel significant before he dies.
He wants to feel important. Ego has got the better of him.

His proposal to wipe all other Warmist regulations in exchange for a
carbon tax sounds like something that could be attractive to the
Left and there may even be some sense in it but since we know what he
really thinks it would seem that he has sold his soul for 30 pieces of
silver.

You can’t make this stuff up. Last week the federal government removed
all exemptions related to its regulation of methane emissions for no
other reason than sheer incompetence. For starters, “The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency is expanding its crackdown on methane
emissions from oil and natural gas drilling to all existing wells,”
writes the Houston Chronicle’s Fuelfix blog. “The announcement from the
White House Thursday came as part of a joint agreement with Canada on
climate change, curbing methane emissions from North America and taking
steps to protect the Arctic region from rising temperatures and oceans.”

Just one problem. The EPA evidently either forgot to ask for or simply
ignored the counsel of government scientists. How’s this for ironic
timing? “Just one day after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
announced it will regulate methane emissions from existing sources of
oil and natural gas in order to ‘combat climate change,’ scientists at
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have released
a new study finding that oil and natural gas producers are not to blame
for a global increase in methane emissions,” Energy In Depth reports.
“In fact, according to the researchers, the increased emissions are
instead coming from wetlands and agriculture.”

And what was the point of tightening methane regulations anyway? As Hot
Air points out, “The energy industry didn’t need anyone to tell them to
reduce methane leakage at drill sites. Why? Because it’s a primary
component of natural gas. In case that’s not sinking in yet… it’s the
stuff they are drilling for. When they let it slip out into the
atmosphere that’s literally money going up in smoke.” Unlike Socialism,
industries competing in a capitalist system can’t survive without making
every dollar count (i.e., conservation). That sound you hear? It’s the
collective groan of the estimated 30,000 polar bears currently living in
the Arctic. Wait, didn’t the climate lobby also predict they’d go
extinct? Was that before or after the ice age scare? Science — it’s so
confusing. Maybe, just maybe, the government should stop forcing
ill-advised rules on us, particularly when the feds can’t even agree on
the science.

The Left Is Embracing Orwellian Policies to Go After ‘Climate Deniers’

Just when we thought liberalism can’t get any more authoritarian, the Obama administration reminds us that it can.

Yes, that’s right. If you happen to disagree with the
administration’s views of global warming, you could face a civil suit
accusing you of fraud and corruption.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch recently confirmed that she had
“referred” the “matter” of whether climate change “deniers” should be
brought to court on racketeering charges to the FBI.

Yes, that’s right. If you happen to disagree with the administration’s
views of global warming, you could face a civil suit accusing you of
fraud and corruption.

This represents a breathtaking corruption of the law. Laws designed to
catch mafia figures on corruption charges could be twisted to punish
Americans whose only crime is to contest the Obama administration’s view
of climate change.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who asked Lynch about climate change at
last week’s hearing, has been at this game for some time. He has long
accused the fossil fuel industry of falsifying scientific research. He
wants to target oil companies with Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organization, or RICO, laws, in the same way they were used against the
tobacco industry.

Where to begin? First of all, it was a travesty to apply RICO laws to
the tobacco industry. They were designed to catch murdering mafia
bosses, not scientists or private companies engaged in research.

Even so, there is a huge difference between the health impacts of smoking and climate change.

The former is well documented, while the latter is not even remotely
established as a scientific fact. What is more, where do Whitehouse and
the others get off assuming that funding influences only one side of the
argument? They argue that scientists supported by oil companies are
corrupt, but why is a pro-global warming scientist receiving funds from a
pro-global warming organization any less corrupt? The climate change
world is awash in millions of dollars of politically motivated research
in favor of global warming. What is the difference?

Might the answer be that Whitehouse prefers funding only for his side of the argument?

Whitehouse is not alone in waging an official crusade against so-called
climate change “deniers.” Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., a ranking member
of the House Committee on Natural Resources, once demanded information
on the financial records of certain professors who were skeptical of
climate change orthodoxy.

Let’s pause a moment to reflect on what this means. A government
official demands the private records of an American citizen solely on
the basis of where that person stands on a political issue. The
professor has committed no crime, but merely holds a scientific view
opposed, for political reasons, by a congressman.

So who is manipulating science here? A scientist who has the credentials
to draw a scientific conclusion, or a congressman with no scientific
credentials at all questioning the integrity of a scientist?

And then there are the actions of the attorney general’s office in New
York. It has launched a sweeping probe of ExxonMobil to determine
whether ExxonMobil hid risks of climate change from investors. Using a
broad interpretation of the state’s consumer protection and securities
laws, the attorney general is also investigating a leading coal company,
Peabody Energy, for the same reason.

All of this is truly Orwellian. As I explain in my forthcoming book, “The Closing of the Liberal Mind”:

"The intent could not be clearer: the state should
suppress any questions about the reliability of climate change findings
or data. In other words, a court should be invited to silence one side
of a public policy debate".

This is official harassment, pure and simple. It is intended to stifle free and open debate and inquiry.

Thus do threats by federal officials, congressmen, and state prosecutors
to silence people join campus radicals in the closing of the liberal
mind. It’s a sad day not only for freedom of thought and expression, but
for the rule of law.

Hillary Clinton is now on record admitting her “green” energy policies
will “put a lot of coal miners” out of their jobs. The politician who
benefits from playing divisive politics went too far: she told the
truth. What a gaffe!

“I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic
opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country,”
Clinton said. “Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal
companies out of business.”

But never fear, coal-stained workers in West Virginia, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Kentucky (all contested states in the coming general
election). While Clinton wants to destroy your jobs, she might offer you
new ones in the heavily subsidized fields of green energy. We’re sure
your skills of working decades underground translate well into working
on a solar panel field or wind farm. Remember: Clinton cares.

“Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their
health [and] often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power
our factories,” Clinton continued. “Now we’ve got to move away from coal
and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the
people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied
on.”

Who does the Democrat Party serve? Not the blue-collar workers that used
to be the backbone of the party. Under Barack Obama, the government
waged a war on coal, and Clinton vows to continue to pick the winners
and losers of the nation’s energy economy, courting the ecofascist vote.
Clinton betrays a disregard for how her environmental policies harm
ordinary Americans.

It's not global warming after all! Tim Flannery will be
surprised. He and many others have long attributed any adverse
weather event in Australia to global warming

Australia is a land of extremes, and famously of “droughts and flooding
rains”. That’s been truer than ever in the 21st century; since 1999 the
country has see-sawed from drought to deluge with surprising speed.

There was the millennium drought, which lasted more than a decade and
culminated in disasters such as Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires in
2009. Then, in 2011, Cyclone Yasi struck Queensland and a large swathe
of Australia exploded under a green carpet of grasses, shrubs and trees.

Filming of the movie Mad Max: Fury Road was moved from outback Australia
to Namibia after the big wet of 2010-11, because Australia’s luxurious
growth of wildflowers and metre-high grasses didn’t quite match the
post-apocalyptic landscape the movie’s producers had in mind. In Alice
Springs, the Henley-on-Todd Regatta was almost cancelled in 2011 because
there was water in the normally dry river.

Globally, the big wet on land caused a 5 mm drop in sea levels as large
amounts of rain were deposited on Australia, South America and Africa.
This coincided with an unprecedented increase in carbon stored in
vegetation, especially in arid and semi-arid regions of the southern
hemisphere. The greening of Australia in particular had a globally
significant impact.

Meteorologists have struggled to explain these wild variations in
Australia’s weather. Dry years with disappointing crops have been linked
to the Pacific Ocean’s El Niño phase (part of a cycle called the El
Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)). But despite its huge influence, not
even ENSO can fully account for Australia’s extreme rainfall patterns.

Our research, published this week in Nature’s Scientific Reports, offers
an explanation. We found that conditions in the three oceans that
surround Australia – the Pacific, Indian and Southern Oceans – combine
to amplify each other’s influences on Australian weather.

Extraordinarily wet and dry years occur when the ENSO phase is in sync
with two other cycles, called the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) and the
Southern Annular Mode (SAM).

The three have been synchronised since 1999, which explains why things have been so volatile this century.
Weather engines

ENSO is the biggest driver of global climate and associated rainfall
patterns – unsurprisingly, given that the Pacific is the world’s biggest
ocean. The IOD is generated by a gradient in sea-surface temperatures
along the equator in the Indian Ocean, while the SAM represents a
north-south oscillation in Southern Ocean sea-surface temperatures.

By comparing sea-surface temperatures in the three oceans with rainfall
data and satellite images of vegetation growth, we have shown for the
first time that abnormally large fluctuations in rainfall across
Australia are due to the synchronisation of these three ocean cycles.

For instance, both La Niña and negative IOD bring rain to Australia.
When they co-occur, one amplifies the other. This is reinforced still
further by a negative SAM, which helps to create the Continental Low,
which can interact with the monsoon depression over a large area of the
continental interior.

When all of this happens together, it results in extraordinarily heavy
rainfall over large parts of Australia, transforming deserts into vast
oases teeming with life.
Withstanding the switch

When the rain arrived in 2010, it was abrupt – coming straight after one
of the driest years this century. In 2009, only 139 mm fell at the
Bureau of Meteorology’s Territory Grape Farm station. The heart of the
monsoon depression had been pushed north of Darwin, high pressure
blocked rain from central and western Australia, and green plant growth
was restricted to a small strip of land from Tennant Creek, in the
Northern Territory, into Queensland.

Too much or too little rain can each be problematic. When both happen in
quick succession, it is hard to profit fully from the wet or to remain
solvent through the dry. In natural ecosystems, bushfires become more
likely as the plants swing between exceptional growth and subsequent
drying and death, leaving behind huge amounts of fuel. Farmers may need
to diversify their livestock numbers and crop types to provide extra
resilience to the changing conditions.

Understanding how Australia responds to these extremes offers a
barometer for emergency services, farmers and everyone else on the land
who will need to adapt to Australia’s lean times as well as the times of
plenty.

NSW imports most of its domestic gas for heating and cooking because mining opponents obstruct it from mining its own gas

More than 60 per cent of NSW voters oppose the Baird government's plans
to crack down on anti-mining protests, according to an exclusive
state-wide poll.

The news comes as about 1000 environmentalists, unions, civil
libertarians and the Reverend Fred Nile shut down traffic on Macquarie
Street as parliament prepared to vote on the controversial bill on
Tuesday.

A NSW government source said it was possible the bill would be passed
into law by the state's upper house on Tuesday night. Its passage
appears guaranteed with the support of the Shooters and Fishers Party.

But a new poll shows less than 20 per cent of all voters support the measures, while 60 per cent are opposed.

In a troubling sign for the coalition government, more than half of
those who declared support for its parties also said they opposed the
measures.

"These measures may pass but they will have no social licence," said
Greens MLC David Shoebridge. "We will break these laws on the street".

Two lanes and later all traffic on Macquarie Street near the NSW parliament was shut down by the protests despite heavy rain.

Bogaine Spearim, a Gamilaraay man and activist, said: "This proposal is
going to deny [our] people access to our sacred land. "[But] we
can't think about the risk of getting arrested. We have to think about
the risk of a generation that doesn't have access."

Both the NSW Bar Association and the Law Society have also issued
statements condemning the plans to increase ten-fold some fines levied
upon anti-mining protesters.

Police would also be given greater powers to search protesters without a warrant and to "move them on".

The law society said the changes did not "appear to be either necessary
or proportionate" as police in NSW already had extensive powers to
search and detain people.

The bill would also broaden the scope of existing anti-mining-protest
laws to expose a wave of coal seam gas protesters - such as those
who chain themselves to machinery - to up to seven years' jail.

"We can't afford a $5000 fine on our pensions," said Anne Thompson, a
farmer from Eltham in northern NSW and one of the founders of the
Knitting Nannas anti-mining movement. "We're already making jailbird
outfits".

The Nannas have been cited by green groups as examples of the kinds of
non-violent protesters who may fall foul of the legislation.

But the NSW government argues the laws will simply update existing laws,
which have already criminalised the offence of hindering activity on
mining, to cover coal-seam gas mining.

The government notes that protests have led to more than 800
interruptions for the operations of one miner, Santos, on its Narrabri
site since 2013.

The telephone poll of about 1200 NSW voters was conducted by Reachtel on
March 14. The poll was commissioned by the NSW Conservation Council.

A concomitant plan by the state government to reduce drastically fines
levied upon mining companies, in some instances from a maximum of $1
million to $5000, is even more unpopular. 80 per cent of voters oppose
the move including those who identify as supporters of the coalition
parties.

"Mr Baird's decision to push these laws through parliament without
community consultation reinforces the perception that he is doing the
bidding of coal and gas companies," said the CEO of the conservation
council, Kate Smolski. "We would have lost many our most cherished
natural areas to mining and logging if Mr Baird's anti-protest laws were
in place during key environmental battles in NSW's history".

The NSW Unions movement, which is considering a High Court challenge to
the laws also joined the protest. NSW Labor frontbencher Adam
Searle declared the laws "unnecessary".

Liberal MLC Peter Phelps "went berserk" during a partyroom meeting and
vowed to not support legislation to force small petrol retailers to sell
an ethanol blend. Opponents of the legislation say it will drive
up petrol prices by as much as 8¢ a litre.

Mr Phelps - a self-styled libertarian - upbraided the minister with
carriage of the legislation, Victor Dominello, during the meeting on
Tuesday.

Mr Phelps told the minister it was "illiberal" to force companies to
sell a product that "people don't want", according to the source.

He detailed Mr Dominello's publicly available diary summaries, which
show he has met with ethanol producer Manildra five times as Minister
for Better Regulation.

The NSW Greens have previously pointed out that Australia's largest
ethanol producer, Manildra, has donated $4.3 million to the Liberals,
Nationals and Labor since 1998.

Mr Phelps then told the partyroom he would not be supporting the
legislation when it came into the upper house. He has been approached
for comment.

In NSW, the law says major retailers must try to ensure ethanol accounts
for 6 per cent of all petrol sold, via the E10 blend. Retailers with
fewer than 20 sites are exempt.

But ethanol accounts for only about 2.7 per cent of all petrol sold in NSW.

The government's legislation is expected to force smaller retailers
which sell three or more types of automotive fuel to sell E10 for the
first time to reach the 6 per cent mandate, with some exemptions.

Small retailers warn they will be forced to increase the price over
three years to recoup the cost of upgrades if their current exemption
from having to sell ethanol-blended fuel is scrapped without
compensation of up to $326 million.

They say this could drive up the price of petrol by as much as 8¢ a litre.

But Mr Dominello has said the changes are aimed at "creating a
competitive biofuels industry in which E10 is a cheap and attractive
option for motorists, while maintaining choice among other regular and
premium unleaded fuels".

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

16 March, 2016

Cherrypicking is bad -- except when I do it

That seems to be the Warmist idea. The amusing Phil Plait
has praised to the skies a long article by Tamino, an inveterate
Warmist, which sets out incontrovertible evidence that global warming is
real. So I had a look at that article. Tamino says:

"The satellite data for temperature in the troposphere is what
senator Ted Cruz likes to use when he claims global warming isn’t
happening. But he doesn’t show all of it — just the part after 1997.
That way, he can start his graphs with that big fluctuation in
1997-1998, so that fluctuation will look like it’s part of the trend. It
isn’t. But Ted Cruz wants you to think it is, so he won’t show you what
happened before that — proper context would reveal how shallow his
argument is."

So it's bad to choose your starting points for a graph. But
Tamino himself does exactly that. His first graph starts from 1880 and
his next one starts in 1970. And so it goes. He has
many graphs and many different starting points for them. They
start wherever he needs them to start to make his case. I won't
reproduce anything further from his article but you can log on and see
for yourself.

Tamino is very good at lying with statistics. It would be amusing
to see him start all his graphs from 1880. In fact, if you look at
his graph that does start from 1880, you can clearly see that warming
levelled out from around the year 2000. There was a rise last year
but that was due to the El Nino weather cycle. So there was some
slight warming in C20 but none in the present century. Will it
resume? Nobody knows.

Global warming levels masked by aerosols: study

This is just a whole heap of modelling, guesswork in other words

There was a silver lining to the sulfur pollution in our atmosphere late
last century – it offset some of the warming effects of greenhouse
gases. And now we're cleaning up our act, the Arctic has suffered. Amy
Middleton reports.

High levels of aerosols, spewed from coal- and gas-powered power plants,
cooled our atmosphere, masking up to a third of global warming caused
by greenhouse gases last century.

And when Europe cleaned up its sulfur emissions, it inadvertantly gave Arctic warming a boost.

A study led by geoscientist Trude Storelvmo at Yale University and
published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience bypassed climate
modelling and instead observed temperature, greenhouse gas levels and
surface radiation from 1,300 surface sites from across the globe from
1964 and 2010.

For the first 30 years or so, less sunlight reflected from Earth back into space, a phenomenon known as “global dimming”.

Sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere pointed the finger at human
involvement. When coal is burnt, for instance, sulfur dioxide (SO2)
molecules released into the atmosphere form tiny aerosol particles.
These particles are particularly effective at bouncing sunlight back
into space.

But around the turn of the century, this global dimming eased, gearing
instead towards “global brightening”. Today, European sulfur emissions
are less than a quarter of their peak in the 1970s, writes Thorsten
Mauritsen, a climate scientist at the Max Planck Institute for
Meteorology, in an accompanying News and Views article.

The researchers then analysed changing temperatures in relation to levels of solar radiation and greenhouse gas concentrations.

The findings suggest “about one-third of potential continental warming
attributable to increased greenhouse gas concentrations has been masked
by aerosol cooling during this time period”.

A second study in Nature Geoscience looked at the effects of European air pollution on Arctic warming.

Researchers at Stockholm University used regional models of aerosol
levels to highlight a reduction in Europe’s air pollution since 1980,
and SO2 in particular. But the Arctic warmed faster during this period.

“Our study shows that the SO2 emission reductions in Europe since the
1980s have contributed significantly to the enhanced Arctic warming,”
the paper reads.

The paper suggests that, in light of ever-fewer aerosols, “the recent
trend of amplified Arctic warming will be further strengthened”. The
focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is more important than ever.

Despite all the hype around the United Nations conference in Paris last
December, TV news airtime devoted to global warming by major news
networks fell by 5 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to research
published Monday by liberal outlet Media Matters.

The research found that ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox collectively aired
approximately 146 minutes of global warming coverage on their evening
and Sunday news shows in 2015, which was eight minutes less than the
networks aired in 2014.

The network with the most significant decline in coverage was ABC, which
devoted a mere 13 minutes to discussing global warming in 2015. This is
a 59 percent decline from 2014 and far less coverage than any other
network provided in 2015. Global warming coverage from CBS dropped from
56 to 45 minutes. Meanwhile, the only channel which substantially
increased coverage of global warming was Fox, which is mostly skeptical
of the issue.

The majority of global warming coverage that did occur was about the
Paris conference, the Pope’s actions or the Keystone XL oil pipeline —
all of which will likely not be significant issues going forward. Even
the potential investigation of Exxon for its skeptical stance on global
warming couldn’t make headlines.

Of particular concern to Media Matters are arguments that global warming
is causing terrorism haven’t been picked up by mainstream TV networks
or other media outlets. Even Vermont Sen. and presidential candidate
Bernie Sanders blaming the rise of ISIS on global warming failed to
generate coverage and was even labelled “mostly false” by the liberal
fact-checking site PolitiFact.

Other progressive and green outlets, such as Climate Home, are openly
worrying that other issues have “knocked global warming off the front
pages”or that “[c]limate change has dropped off the political radar.”
The effect isn’t limited to media either. Yale University’s Climate and
Energy Institute is shutting down. Even the internet isn’t a safe-haven
for alarmists, with websites such as RealClimate.org starting to go
offline.

Green stalwarts, like former Vice President Al Gore, have sold off media
assets because the public simply isn’t interested in global warming
anymore.

Some people actually might have had to worry about radioactive iodine
being sucked up into their thyroids: the families (especially kids)
living near the Fukushima Daiichi plant. And indeed, kids in the region
were screened for thyroid cancer in the years following the disaster. A
piece in Science last week walks through the history of this screening,
and the lessons it offers are instructive—for any human being who ever
requires medical care.

On its face, as Dennis Normile describes, the initial finding from
screenings in Japan was super alarming. Almost half (half!) of those
screened had nodules or cysts (which can potentially be or become
cancerous) on their thyroids.

Nuts, right? And a Japanese epidemiologist named Toshihide Tsuda
published a paper in 2015 saying that the rate of thyroid cancer in
those Fukushima kids was more than 600 per million—way higher than the 1
to 3 cases per million kids that you would expect. But! As Normile
writes, that comparison wasn’t quite fair. The Fukushima survey used
advanced ultrasound devices that can detect tiny growths, while the
older data came from plain old clinical exams. Oops. You have an apples
to oranges thing going on there, in terms of your diagnostic
instruments.

Indeed, when other scientists screened kids elsewhere in Japan using the
fancy ultrasound devices, rates of cancer were anywhere from 300 to
1,300 per million. What the ultrasound devices find, then, is a whole
lot of turtles.

Turtles are part of what H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at
the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, calls
the barnyard pen of cancers. The barnyard has three animals, turtles,
birds, and rabbits. “The goal of early detection is to fence them in,”
he says.

You can’t fence in the birds. They’re the super aggressive lethal
cancers that are beyond cure. The rabbits, you can maybe do something
about if you can spot them and treat them. (Treatments that, by the way
says Welch, have gotten better and better.) “But for the turtles,” he
says, “you don’t need fences because they’re not going anywhere anyway.
And the thyroid is full of turtles.”

The breast and the prostate are full of turtles too, and just as the
thyroid-scanning ultrasound devices are more likely to find little
nodules there, an upsurge in mammography has led to a corresponding
upsurge in something called ductal carcinoma in situ. Basically cancers
that most of the time would just sit around and do nothing if you left
well enough alone. In other words, they’re indolent (great word), not
malignant. Whether or not we treat them (or even look for them) has been
a matter of great debate in recent years.

It’s very hard to know when upticks and outbreaks are quite what they
appear. Even infectious disease outbreaks can sometimes be attributed to
more-sensitive screening methods. The rise in whooping cough cases has
multiple causes of course, but one of them is improved screening
methods. Gene-based tests called PCR assays can inflate the number of
actual diagnoses, according to a piece by epidemiologist James Cherry in
the New England Journal of Medicine.

Which is to say, if you start looking for something carefully, and if
you use better methods to see what you’re looking for, you will often
find it.

Welch points to an example from the ’70s, when some employees at
Lawrence Livermore National Labs (who deal with nuclear stuff all day
long) were diagnosed with melanoma. Cancer cluster! But no—it was
something else.

What happened, Welch writes in his book Should I Be Tested for Cancer,
is that one person probably got sick. Then, other people in the lab
started getting checked for moles. Some were funky, so that leads to
biopsies, which leads to, in some cases, an actual diagnosis. Then
people start really getting worried. The lab kicks off an awareness
campaign, so more people go in for checks, leading to more biopsies.
“The whole epidemic looked subsequently like it was a pseudoepidemic,”
he says. “It was an epidemic of diagnosis.” The melanomas were mostly
turtles.

In South Korea, checking more thoroughly has absolutely led to more
diagnoses of thyroid cancer. In the late ‘90s, doctors in South Korea
started screening people for thyroid cancer (it was an add-on test to
the national cancer screening program), and cancer cases took off.
“There was a 15-fold increase,” says Welch. “There was nothing like it
in the world!” Now, he says, thyroid cancer is the most common cancer in
Korea—more common than breast, and colon, and lung.

Here’s the really pernicious part. People get checked for thyroid
cancer, doctor finds a little nodule, does a biopsy, there’s some
cancery stuff in there, so they remove the thyroid, and the
person—saints be praised!—the person lives. (Because of course they
lived, they just had a little thing that would never have been a problem
in the first place.) They live (without their thyroid) and now they are
a survivor and the survival rates for thyroid cancer in South Korea are
now really high. Great, right? No. “Once you understand the problem of
turtles, you understand you’re giving credit to finding the cancers that
don’t matter,” says Welch.

How did South Korea combat this surge in cancer cases? A group of
doctors (including Welch) wrote a letter in 2014 discouraging screening
with ultrasonography. Poof. Thyroid operations dropped by 35 percent in a
year. Because the best test “isn’t one that finds the most cancer,” he
says. “The best test is one that finds the cancers that matter.”

So, will the kids who lived near the Fukishima plant suffer more thyroid
cancer than their peers elsewhere? Well, yes. Probably. They are going
to be screened more than most other kids, after all, and those
screenings will turn up more thyroid cancer, just by virtue of the fact
that people are looking for it. And even though a paper in the Journal
of the American College of Radiology recently suggested that thyroid
nodules below a certain size should be left alone, clinicians might not
pay attention. Yes, it would be comforting to think that doctors and
patients could resist the temptation to look for problems … or in some
cases (when the data supports it) to ignore or merely watch what they
find.

A trade association calling itself Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) has
petitioned the courts to side with the Environmental Protection Agency’s
proposed restrictions on carbon dioxide. The agency’s edict, a feature
of its “Clean Power Plan,” would favor “low-emission, energy-efficient”
companies at the expense of traditional energy producers—benefitting the
former by up to an estimated $20 billion per year through 2030. The
trade group’s efforts are both harmful to the economy (especially to
energy innovation) and morally outrageous, according to Strata Research
Associate Michael Jensen and Independent Institute Senior Fellow William
F. Shughart II.

“This politically bestowed windfall comes as coal and even some natural
gas electricity producers get booted to the sidelines by the visible
foot of government rather than by the invisible hand of the market,”
Jensen and Shughart write.

The basic unfairness of AEE’s efforts, Jensen and Shughart argue, is
akin to salad vendors lobbying city officials to ban hot dog sales on
city sidewalks. You might agree that people should eat more salads and
fewer hot dogs, but you would likely recognize that banning hot dogs
would have numerous undesirable consequences—including constituting an
assault on the principle of individual choice. As for favoring green
energy at the expense of fossil fuels, Jensen and Shughart write:
“Unfettered competition, not heavy-handed government intervention, is
what will best address our energy needs and climate change concerns.”

A man dressed as a polar bear stands ot the front of thousands of
protesters at the "Walk Against Warming" march through the streets of
central Sydney December 12, 2009. Thousands took to the streets of
Australia

California Democrats have launched a campaign to dislodge an incumbent
state lawmaker who refused to support Gov. Jerry Brown’s push to cut oil
use in half by 2030.

Cheryl Brown, a democratic state lawmaker from San Bernardino, fought
Brown’s global warming plan to sharply increase taxes on gasoline.
California’s EPA claimed that the tax increase would reduce gasoline use
and help fight global warming. Brown argued that the governor’s agenda
would cause harm to low income families by increasing energy costs. She
ultimately succeeded in watering down the legislation.

“That’s fine if you live in San Francisco and can afford a Tesla,” John
Husing, an assemblywoman Brown supporter and economist, told The Los
Angeles Times. “It’s not fine if you’re a poor family living in downtown
San Bernardino.”

Brown’s events have been disrupted by protesters wearing polar bear
costumes who held up signs reading “People over Profits” and calling her
a “corporate hack.” She has even been attacked for her links to
the oil industry by an online campaign.

The assemblywoman is now facing a brutal reelection slug-fest from a
progressive challenger, attorney Eloise Reyes. Reyes has been endorsed
by key members of California’s Democratic establishment. Labor unions
that previously endorsed Brown have seemingly switched their allegiance
and renounced the lawmaker’s policy stances.

Reyes has capitalized on this by making global warming and
environmentalism a centerpiece of her campaign, even though polls
show that voters in the district don’t care much about those issues.

“There is a difference between Cheryl Brown and myself, and the future I
see for my district,” Reyes told The Los Angeles Times. “I want a safer
environment, I want a cleaner environment, I want protections for our
workers.”

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

15 March, 2016

February spike in global temperatures stuns scientists

Rubbish. The recent temperature rise was a long expected effect of the cyclical El Nino weather process.

According to NASA analysis, average temperatures last month were 1.35 degrees above the norm for the 1951-1980 period.

They smashed the previous biggest departure from the average - set only in the previous month - by 0.21 degrees.

"This is really quite stunning ... it's completely unprecedented," said
Stefan Rahmstorf, from Germany's Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact
Research and a visiting professorial fellow at the University of NSW,
noting the NASA data as reported by the Wunderground blog.

The blog's authors, Jeff Masters and Bob Henson, described February's
spike as "a true shocker, and yet another reminder of the incessant
long-term rise in global temperature resulting from human-produced
greenhouse gases".

The monster El Nino event had contributed to the current record run of
global temperatures by increasing the area of abnormally warm water in
the central and eastern Pacific.

Compared with the rival record giant El Nino of 1997-98, global temperatures are running about 0.5 degrees hotter.

"That shows how much much global warming we have had since then," Professor Rahmstorf said. [Rubbish.
There is no proof of that. It is easily attributable to natural
variation. Records of El Nino processes are quite recent]

The first half of March is at least as warm, he added, and it means
temperatures "are clearly more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial
levels".

"We are in a kind of climate emergency now," Professor Rahmstorf said,
noting that global carbon dioxide levels last year rose by a record rate
of more than 3 parts per million. [More nonsense. Mauna
Loa shows monthly CO2 levels in 2015 just oscillated up and down around
the 400 mark with no overall trend. See here]

The most northerly latitudes of the planet were the most abnormally hot
regions in February, with large areas reporting temperatures 12 degrees
or warmer than average, the NASA data shows.

The unusual heat in the far north means the Arctic sea ice will be
thinner and more vulnerable to melting as the region heads into the
warmer months, Professor Rahmstorf said.

Arctic sea ice is already at its smallest extent for this time of year
on record. The relatively warm seas are contributing to a warmer
atmosphere, reinforcing the long-term trend.

As the Wunderground blog noted, the impacts of the unusual global heat
have been felt far and wide, including in severe droughts in Vietnam and
Zimbabwe.

Fiji, meanwhile, continues work to recover from Cyclone Winston, the most powerful storm recorded in the southern hemisphere.

"[This warming] is not harmless," Professor Rahmstorf said. "It has quite a negative impact on society and the biosphere."

While February's global heat spike is unlikely to be sustained as the El
Nino winds down, the latest indicators "are all symptoms of the general
warming trend", Professor Rahmstorf said.

Climate Change Deniers, Loretta Lynch, and the Government War on Free Speech

Ron Paul comments:

During her appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week,
Attorney General Loretta Lynch admitted that she asked the FBI to
examine whether the federal government should take legal action against
so-called climate change deniers. Attorney General Lynch is not
responding to any criminal acts committed by climate change skeptics.
Instead, she is responding to requests from those frustrated that
dissenters from the alleged climate change consensuses have successfully
blocked attempts to create new government programs to fight climate
change.

These climate change censors claim that the argument over climate change
is settled and the deniers' success in blocking congressional action is
harming the public. Therefore, the government must disregard the First
Amendment and silence anyone who dares question the reigning climate
change dogma. This argument ignores the many reputable scientists who
have questioned the magnitude, effects, and role of human action in
causing climate change.

If successful, the climate change censors could set a precedent that
could silence numerous other views. For example, many people believe the
argument over whether we should audit, and then end, the Federal
Reserve is settled. Therefore, the deniers of Austrian economics are
harming the public by making it more difficult for Congress to restore a
free-market monetary policy. So why shouldn't the government silence
Paul Krugman?

The climate change censorship movement is part of a larger effort to
silence political speech. Other recent examples include the IRS's
harassment of tea party groups as well as that agency's (fortunately
thwarted) attempt to impose new rules on advocacy organizations that
would have limited their ability to criticize a politician's record in
the months before an election.

The IRS and many state legislators and officials are also trying to
force public policy groups to hand over the names of their donors. This
type of disclosure can make individuals fearful that, if they support a
pro-liberty group, they will face retaliation from the government.

Efforts to silence government critics may have increased in recent
years; however, the sad fact is the US Government has a long and
shameful history of censoring speech. It is not surprising that war and
national security have served as convenient excuses to limit political
speech. So-called liberal presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin
Roosevelt both supported wartime crackdowns on free speech.

Today, many neoconservatives are using the war on terror to justify
crackdowns on free speech, increased surveillance of unpopular religious
groups like Muslims, and increased government control of social media
platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Some critics of US foreign policy
have even been forbidden to enter the country.

Many opponents of government restrictions on the First Amendment and
other rights of Muslims support government actions targeting so-called
"right-wing extremists." These fair-weather civil liberties defenders
are the mirror image of conservatives who support restricting the free
speech rights of Muslims in the name of national security, yet clam to
oppose authoritarian government. Defending speech we do not agree with
is necessary to effectively protect the speech we support.

A government that believes it can run our lives, run the economy, and
run the world will inevitably come to believe it can, and should, have
the power to silence its critics. Eliminating the welfare-warfare state
is the key to protecting our free speech, and other liberties, from an
authoritarian government.

According to a spokesman from ExxonMobil, the company has spent 40 years
doing climate research in conjunction with the Department of Energy,
academics and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the
company has made that research publicly available. But since the company
exercised its right not to reach definitive conclusions on climate
change — despite the fact that, at the same time, many of the world’s
experts were also exercising that same right — ExxonMobil says it has
been the target of environmental activists, who have been deliberately
distorting materials from the company’s archives in an attempt to get
the government to investigate ExxonMobil.

Sadly, their efforts were successful.

As reported by Kate Sheppard of the Huffington Post, Reps. Ted Lieu and
Mark DeSaulnier, House Democrats from California who were persuaded by
environmental groups’ smear tactics, approached the Department of
Justice last fall to look into whether ExxonMobil violated the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or any other federal laws. The
company was allegedly “organizing a sustained deception campaign
disputing climate science and failing to disclose truthful information
to investors and the public.”

Rep. Lieu says he believes the company was working publicly to undermine
climate science, and that its actions are on par with tobacco companies
who were guilty of “lying to the American people” by denying the link
between smoking and cancer in order “to better sell their product.” Just
as the DOJ used RICO law to prosecute tobacco companies in the late
1990s, Rep. Lieu says he would “would hope for a prosecution” of
ExxonMobil if the facts warrant it.

While there is no clear indication of how seriously the DOJ is
considering the congressmen’s witch hunt, the agency has at least
humored the congressmen by announcing that it has forwarded the case to
the FBI in order to determine the validity of such an investigation — an
investigation that the environmental lobby and Democratic presidential
candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders fully support.

If the FBI decides to open an investigation, the move would be motivated
entirely by political considerations. The last time we checked, there
is no crime in being skeptical of climate change or advocating for
policies that aid ExxonMobil’s interests. An investigation would simply
be Democrats and the environmental lobby seeking a big scalp.

Furthermore, such an investigation is a trampling of First Amendment
rights. ExxonMobil is under no obligation to worship at the altar of
climate change, nor is any other company or individual. There is no
constitutional rationale for punishing the company for its actions
relating to dubious climate change claims, and the FBI shouldn’t humor
Democrats or environmental lobbyists any longer on this issue. There
should be no further investigation.

Five years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, India and China have embraced nuclear power

Other countries in the region also want to build more plants - even in high-risk areas prone to earthquakes and tsunamis.

When Sun Qin talks about the future of nuclear power, his eyes light-up.
In China alone, there are 31 nuclear power plants and another 24 are
under construction, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Now, the president of the China's National Nuclear Corporation wants
(CNNC) wants to build 30 additional nuclear power stations - not only in
China, but also in the neighboring states along the so-called "New Silk
Road." CNNC has already exported six reactors abroad, but the Chinese
want to expand further.

"We face very strong competition in the international nuclear market,"
says Sun Qin, adding that "countries like Russia, South Korea, Japan and
the United States are all exploring the global nuclear market
aggressively."

Following the Fukushima disaster, China's government initially suspended
the construction of additional nuclear power plants. Instead,
comprehensive security policies were adopted. But in the autumn of 2012,
Beijing lifted the moratorium on future development - and since then,
has pursued a more ambitious nuclear program.

China needs to restructure its massive energy sector. Currently, the
country produces some two-thirds of its total energy from outdated coal
power plants. The Chinese people complain of air pollution and other
environmental damage, which is why the government in Beijing will shut
down about 1,000 coal plants by the end of this year.

Nuclear power, on the other hand, is considered a relatively "clean"
alternative to coal. In daily congressional meetings, the Communist
Party has been discussing plans for a massive expansion of nuclear
energy. By 2030, a total of 110 nuclear power plants will be in
operation.

With this, China would overtake the US as the country with the most
nuclear power plants connected to the grid. Greenpeace nuclear expert
Heinz Smital views the speed at which the reactors are being developed
as problematic: "The Chinese safety authorities do not have the capacity
to examine the buildings properly," said Smital. "They will likely wave
things through, rubber-stamp everything and not mess with the state-run
construction consortiums. There is a big security risk."

Energy-hungry India

India's economy grows at a rate of about six percent per annum. But its
ailing energy infrastructure inhibits economic development. Large areas
of the country suffer from regular blackouts and obsolete
infrastructure.

Like China, India's renewable energy sector needs to be massively
expanded. But the country's political elite are convinced that India
must exhaust all possibilities of electricity. Therefore, Delhi is
planning a far-reaching expansion of nuclear power. Prime Minister
Narendra Modi wants to build dozens of new reactors in the next 15
years.

The technical know-how is sourced internationally. Over the past decade,
India has reached civil nuclear agreements with the United States,
Canada, France and Russia. 21 nuclear power plants are already in
operation. Two of the plants are in Kudankulam and Kalpakkam, located on
the southeast coast of the country – areas prone to tsunamis. In
December 2006, a tsunami hit Kalpakkam causing extensive damage, but not
to the nuclear power plant, according to its operator.

Pakistan: Reactors in flood-prone areas

India's neighbor, Pakistan, is also struggling with blackouts and
outdated infrastructure. The country currently operates three small
reactors, with the nuclear plant west of Karachi - located in a
flood-prone area - being one of the oldest in the world.

The remaining two reactors are situated in an earthquake-prone area some
300 kilometers (186.4 miles) south of the capital Islamabad. The
government is planning to build two other reactors in the same area.
According to Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission, Islamabad wants to
build a total of seven new reactors by 2030 - with assistance from
China.

South Korean expansion

Although South Korea is about the size of the former German Democratic
Republic (GDR), the country boasts 25 active nuclear plants. Three
additional ones are under construction, while two others are set to be
completed by 2029. The government plans to increase the share of nuclear
power in the country's overall energy mix from currently 30 to 40
percent.

Still, South Koreans are becoming increasingly skeptical about nuclear
energy - and not just because of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. In 2012
and 2013, a scandal related to the use of fake safety certificates
rocked the country's nuclear industry lobby. State-owned (KHNP) had
thousands of small components featuring falsified certificates fitted
into the country's nuclear plants. As it turns out, large amounts of
bribe money changed hands between KHNP employees, construction firms and
politicians.

This led not only to Korean media speaking of a "nuclear mafia," but
also to a massive drop in the approval ratings for nuclear energy - from
70 percent before the Fukushima disaster to 35 percent. In spite of
this, Seoul is sticking to its plans to expand the use of nuclear power
in the East Asian country.

Warmists are always moaning about present and future droughts. Israel shows how hollow that scare is

"Israel is a water superpower." So wrote Renaissance man and
entrepreneur-commentator Seth M. Siegel in his recent bestselling book
"Let There Be Water: Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World."

This fascinating volume analyzes the amazing pioneering story of how a
once-poor, parched Israel became a prosperous, high-tech startup nation,
offering solutions unto the countries of an increasingly water-starved
world.

Siegel presented Israel as a laboratory for a growing global population
endangered by impending socioeconomic and national security water crises
examined by official top-secret American studies. "Sixty percent of
Israel is desert, and the rest is semiarid," he noted, adding that
Israel's "annual rainfall, not generous to begin with, has dropped by
more than half."

Nonetheless, this former third-world country at its independence
in 1948 "now has one of the world's most rapidly growing economies.
Middle-class life is the norm in Israel."

Siegel said that "despite its challenging climate and unforgiving
landscape, Israel not only doesn't have a water crisis, it has a water
surplus." Prior to World War II, British economists gloomily predicted
that the territory of the British Palestine Mandate on which a Jewish
national home was to emerge could sustain no more than 2 million people.
By contrast, the "geographic area of Palestine today is home to more
than 12 million people" in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and
Israel exports annually water-intensive produce worth billions of
dollars.

Siegel examined in detail the various elements contributing to Israel's
life-giving liquidity in a once barren wilderness where pre-Israeli
Zionist pioneers in the Yishuv depended upon simple wells. Completed in
1964, the National Water Carrier - which transports water in pipes from
the Sea of Galilee in Israel's north to the southern Negev Desert -
symbolizes Israel's national commitment to water infrastructure planning
and development. Per capita, the NWC costs far more than American
iconic public works like the Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam or Panama
Canal.

The author noted that unique Israeli mindsets concerning water
complement material hardware, such as a rejection of water property
rights common in other countries. In Israel, "all water ownership and
usage is controlled by the government acting in the interest of the
people. [Israelis] have surrendered private ownership and the benefits
of a market economy in water for a system that offers universal access
to high-quality water."

On the other hand, this nationalized water system began charging real
water prices in 2008, a dramatic contrast with enormous water subsidies
enjoyed by consumers around the world. "The promise to the public was
that water fees would henceforth be spent exclusively on the nation's
water needs "with nothing diverted to help balance other parts of
municipal or national budgets," Siegel said. This dedicated spending has
procured modern water technology such as pipe-checking robotic cameras,
reducing by 2013 Israel's rate of lost municipal water to under 11
percent; by comparison, Chicago's rate is about 25 percent.

Real water pricing caused an immediate decline in Israeli household
water use by 16 percent, but Israelis have a longstanding national
culture of water conservation. Signs reading "Every Drop Counts" in
Hebrew permeate a country that was the first to make dual-flush toilets
obligatory. Similarly, Israel treats and recycles more than 85 percent
of its sewage for agricultural and other non-drinking uses, while the
reclaimed water rate is under 10 percent for most developed countries
like the United States.

Yet, as Siegel pointed out, farmers around the world - including in
Israel - are the largest water consumers, making water savings in this
sector especially significant. Israel has pioneered drip irrigation with
pipes on or in the ground delivering water directly to plant roots,
saving 40 percent of the water used in traditional irrigation methods,
as well as doubling harvest yields. "Around the world today, only about 5
percent of the irrigated agricultural fields utilize drip irrigation or
other micro-irrigation techniques," he wrote, adding that 75 percent of
Israel's irrigated fields use drip irrigation. While approximately 80
percent of irrigated fields globally "still use some form of the
ancient, and wasteful, flood-irrigation method," usually wasting more
than 50 percent of the used water, "not one farm in Israel has used
flood irrigation in several decades."

Israel has also exploited its global leadership plant research for water
savings. New plant types thrive on diluted, brackish water that changes
their cell structure, reducing water while releasing sugars to create
sweeter produce with better texture. Because of Israel's unique
agricultural technological adaptations, the "best place in Israel to
grow crops today is in the desert," an Israeli scientist told Siegel.

Necessity has been the mother of invention domestically in Israel, and
the country's water technology has gone global in the marketplace.
Siegel noted that 200 Israeli water-based startups in about the last
decade constitute some 10 percent of such startups worldwide; Israeli
firms helped build the Western hemisphere's largest desalinization plant
near San Diego. They drew upon Israel's experience with the largest and
most energy efficient desalinization plant in the world near Tel Aviv,
along with four others on Israel's short Mediterranean coast.

Water is good diplomacy as well as good business for Israel. Solving
water problems helped improve Israel's relations with once-unfriendly
nations like China and India, while closer to home, Jordanians and
Palestinians receive Israeli water exports often at discounted prices.
"While it is still impossible to create new land or to return refugees
to villages where cities or highways now stand, Israel has shown that it
can produce new water," Siegel wrote, about Israel's conflicts with its
Arab neighbors. Approximately 96 percent of some 2.4 million West Bank
Palestinians access piped running water, thanks to Israeli
infrastructure improvements following the 1967 war.

In his book, Siegel showed how this small Jewish state gives hope for
gargantuan global water challenges, a modern David versus Goliath story.
"Israel is the only country in the world which has less area covered by
desert today than 50 years ago," he noted. While often associated with
conflict, Israel offers technological fountains of life.

'Living near a power station WON'T damage your health': Leading
scientist busts myths about the dangers of radiation - and says being
FAT is more likely to kill you

With it's bright yellow and black, wasp-like warning symbol, it's hardly
surprising there is some level of fear and trepidation when it comes to
radiation.

It's lethal potential overshadows its other vital role as a life-saver, providing cancer treatment and X-rays to those in need.

Today marks five years since a magnitude nine earthquake triggered a
triple nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactor on the
north-east coast of Japan.

Although making the headlines as the biggest nuclear disaster since
Chernobyl, radiation expert Professor Gerry Thomas, says there have been
no radiation-related deaths from the accident.

Professor Thomas, who works at the department of surgery and cancer at
Imperial College London, says the public have got radiation all wrong –
and think it is much more dangerous than it actually is.

She argues radiation saves far more people every year than it kills but is still perceived as a great danger.

Professor Thomas goes as far as to compare it to other toxins - alcohol
and even salt - saying it is safe in small doses but dangerous in high
amounts.

Here, she addresses the most common radiation myths and explains why
your waistline poses a greater danger to your health than radiation.

MYTH: LIVING NEAR A NUCLEAR POWER STATION IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Studies have shown that an operational coal-fired power station releases
three times more radiation than an operational nuclear power plant.

This is because fossil fuels naturally contain radioactive elements, which is released when they are burnt.

However, the levels of radiation emitted would not pose any danger to health.

Many people still believe there were radiation-related deaths following
the Fukushima accident when in fact there have been no radiation-related
deaths from the incident.

This was because the clean-up workers were on a strict rotation pattern,
which kept their doses well below the level at which any direct effects
would be seen from radiation exposure.

Doses to the population at large were kept low by sheltering, evacuation and removing contaminated food from the food chain.

These actions meant the doses to members of the general population were
kept to below that of a single whole body CT scan – and in more than 90
per cent of cases to less than a tenth of a CT scan.

We learnt the lessons from previous accidents such as Chernobyl, and put them into action.

MYTH: RADIATION IS ALWAYS DEADLY

Many people believe any exposure to radiation is dangerous - yet we are exposed to radiation every moment throughout our lives.

Every year we are exposed to a dose of radiation of 2 milli Sieverts
(which is a measure that adds our exposure from different types of
radiation).

By comparison one X-ray delivers 0.2 milli Sieverts.

We receive radiation from space - so called cosmic radiation - which is
why we receive higher amounts of radiation when we fly (around 0.1mSv
for a return flight from London-Tokyo), and why astronauts receive high
levels of radiation in space.

Radiation is all over the planet, released from natural sources
including soil and rocks due to the naturally occurring element
Radon. And it is released in the soil and from rocks such as
granite.

If you measured radiation levels in Aberdeen, which is built on granite,
there would be higher background levels of radiation than in Fukushima.

And in comparison to other lifestyle factors, the risk of radiation to our health is tiny.

Research has suggested that being close to the nuclear bomb when it
detonated in Hiroshima would be less of a threat to your health than
being severely obese.

Research published in 2007 calculated a person would lose 2.6 years of
life if you were 1.5 km from the atomic bombs when they detonated.
In comparison, if you're severely obese you lose 10 years of your life.

MYTH: PEOPLE CAN BE RADIOACTIVE

Many people believe that once someone has been exposed to radiation they
are somehow contaminated, and can cause people around them to be harmed

However, being exposed to radiation beams - for example during an X-ray
or when a patient is receiving conventional radiotherapy for cancer,
does not leave any lingering radiation.

This is because the radiation passes straight through the body. If
someone ingests radiation, their body can remain radioactive.

But, crucially, it is not their actual body that remains radioactive - but their bodily fluids such as sweat, saliva and urine.

An example of this is when medics give patients with thyroid cancer a
drink that contains radioactive iodine. Following surgery to remove the
thyroid gland, patients are given radioiodine to kill any remaining
thyroid cells that remain in the body. The thyroid cells absorb
the radioiodine, and this kills the cells.

However these patients must remain in isolation for around 24 hours
until they have excreted all the radioactive iodine from their body.

We all carry a small amount of radiation, because the food we eat, such
as fruit and vegetables, contain radioactive chemical elements absorbed
from the ground.

The radioactive elements from food cause our body to emit small amounts of radiation in our sweat and bodily fluids.

So if you sleep next to somebody you'll receive greater amounts of radiation at night than if you sleep alone.

MYTH: MEDICAL AND SECURITY BODY SCANNERS ARE DANGEROUS

Medical scans, such as X-rays and CT scans, and security scanners at airports deliver very small amounts of radiation.

If a doctor suggests you have an X-ray or CT scan the benefits to your health far outweigh any risks.

And airport scanners only deliver 0.00002 mSv.

However, 'leisure scans' should be avoided.

I sometimes see adverts for private CT scans, offered to people who are
fit and healthy but just want to check whether they have anything
lurking. Almost like a yearly check-up with your doctor.

I personally wouldn't opt for these, as you are exposing yourself to
radiation to 5 years’ worth of background radiation (around 10mSv) for
no clear benefit.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

14 March, 2016

Australian Greenies trying to crawl to the workers

After their attacks on coal companies have caused big problems for
those companies, Greenies are trying to shield themselves from the
fallout of that. If the companies go broke, it will be bad news
for their employees. And the Greenies don't want to be the target of
unhappy employees. So the press release below is an appeal to the
corporate regulator to "do something" about the financial health of the
companies concerned. What the regulator could do is unknown

Environmental Justice Australia and Greenpeace International today
alerted the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to a
number of Australian creditors who would be at risk should Peabody
Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal company, file for
bankruptcy.

Many of Peabody’s senior lenders are calling for the company to file for
bankruptcy in the U.S. However, this could risk Peabody’s Australian
employees’ redundancy entitlements, while Australian state governments
could be left to foot the bill for rehabilitating mines if Peabody’s
financial assurance is insufficient.

Peabody owns nine operating coal mines in Queensland and New South Wales
seemingly via a subsidiary registered in Gibraltar. Peabody's
Australian assets secure, in part, a financing facility worth US$1.2
billion for the company. Not only will Peabody's likely bankruptcy
impact whether its operations in Australia will continue, but the
company’s complicated structure may determine if Australian creditors
get a fair deal.

David Barnden, a lawyer from Environmental Justice Australia specialising in finance and climate change, said:

"Peabody is in poor financial health. It has a complicated holding
structure and is highly leveraged. Bankruptcy appears imminent. ASIC has
been asked to investigate whether Australian creditors will get a fair
deal if and when bankruptcy occurs. Potential creditors include workers
who may have redundancy entitlements and the New South Wales and
Queensland state governments which might need to pay for rehabilitation
costs beyond any financial assurance held for Peabody's mines. It is a
matter of public interest that Australian creditors are protected to the
full extent of the law."

Marina Lou, lawyer from Greenpeace International, said:

"Regulators in the U.S. have already raised concerns that taxpayers
could be left on the hook for coal mine reclamation obligations as the
coal industry declines, and a Peabody bankruptcy would significantly
exacerbate these risks. Australian regulators should also be
investigating the risks to protect taxpayers and the environment from a
potential Peabody bankruptcy.

"Australian taxpayers have already heavily subsidised this industry
during its decline and now they may also need to bail it out and clean
up its mess after it finally closes down too.

"We need ASIC to act because this isn’t a one-off. There are many other
struggling mining companies in Australia and unless proper plans are
made for when they go bankrupt, the overall cost to the country and
mining workers could be far greater."

EJA and Greenpeace have identified a number of potential creditors of
Peabody's Australian operations. They include workers at Peabody's mines
who may miss out on entitlements, and the governments of New South
Wales and Queensland, which may become creditors if Peabody's financial
assurance is insufficient to rehabilitate its mine sites.

In this scenario, either the taxpayer will foot the bill for
rehabilitation costs or sites may never be rehabilitated. Unfortunately,
the long-term nature of environmental issues associated with voids from
open-cut coal mines, such as acid mine drainage, means liabilities may
not crystallise until long into the future.

As a result of these public interest concerns, ASIC has been asked to
investigate the relationship between Peabody and its Australian
subsidiaries.

Does their abysmal grasp of energy and economics make Hillary and Bernie unfit to govern?

Paul Driessen

"Natural gas is a good, cheap alternative to fossil fuels," former
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously intoned. (Psssst. Ms. Nancy,
natural gas is a fossil fuel.)

"If I thought there was any evidence that drilling could save people
money, I would consider it. But it won’t," President Obama said in 2008.
"We can’t drill our way out of the problem" of high energy prices and
disappearing supplies, he still insisted two years later. How shocked he
must be now.

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing – aka, fracking – has
unleashed a gusher of oil and natural gas, sent oil prices plunging $100
a barrel since 2008, dropped US oil imports to their lowest level in 45
years, and saved American families tens of billions of dollars annually
in lower energy costs.

But if price and "peak oil" rationales fail, there is always "dangerous
manmade global warming" to justify carbon-based energy and fracking
bans, and renewable energy mandates and subsidies.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton contend that climate change is an
"existential threat" to people and planet. Senator Sanders says bluntly,
"I do not support fracking." He also wants legislation that would keep
America’s abundant oil, gas and coal "in the ground."

Mrs. Clinton opposes all fossil fuel energy extraction on federal lands.
She rejects fracking if "any locality or state is against it," any
methane is released or water contaminated, or companies don’t reveal
"exactly what chemicals they are using." Under her watch, there won’t be
"many places in America where fracking will continue." She will "stop
fossil fuels" and ensure 50% renewable energy by 2030.

One senses that these folks inhabit a parallel universe, cling like
limpets to anti-hydrocarbon ideologies, or perhaps embody Mark
Twain’s admonition that "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let
people think you’re a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all
doubt."

One also senses that as president the two Democrat candidates will
continue Mr. Obama’s imperial practices. If Congress resists their
policy initiatives, they will simply issue more Executive Branch
diktats, and ignore their impacts on jobs and the economy, the absence
of evidence that fracking harms human health or water quality, the
reality that renewable energy "alternatives" also cause serious problems
– and scientists’ continuing inability to separate human from natural
influences on climate and weather events and trends that are essentially
the same as during the twentieth century.

Officially, 7.8 million Americans are still unemployed. But add the
long-term unemployed, those who looked for a job once in the past year
but not in recent weeks, and those who are working involuntarily in
low-pay, part-time positions – and the total swells to 16.8 million.
Over 46 million are on food stamps.

The federal debt hit $19 trillion in February and is projected to reach
$23 trillion by 2020. In FY2015, the US Treasury collected $3.2 trillion
in taxes and other revenues, but spent $3.7 trillion. Profligate state
and local spending has swollen these deficits by tens of billions more,
for the same reason: politicians are in cahoots with unions, crony
capitalist rent seekers, and assorted grievance, victim and welfare
groups.

Mountains of federal regulations cost businesses and families $1.9
trillion annually – half of our national budget. They drag down
investment, job creation and tax revenues. State and local rules add
more pain.

To borrow the Greens and Democrats’ favorite term, this is unsustainable.

Oil, gas and coal account for 82% of all US energy and 68% of US
electricity generation – reliably and affordably. Producing this
abundant energy also generates positive cash-flow: fossil fuel bonuses,
rents and royalties from federal lands totaled $126 billion between 2003
and 2013; corporate and personal taxes resulting from the jobs and
activities powered by that energy added tens of billions more.

Wind, solar and biofuel programs, by contrast, are black holes for
hard-earned taxpayer subsidies – and rarely work unless consumers are
required to use that energy, and pay premium prices for doing so.

Even getting to 50% "carbon-free" energy fifteen years from now will
require: vastly more subsidies and mandates; turning entire forests into
fuel; blanketing croplands and habitats with enormous biofuel
plantations, wind farms and solar installations; and killing millions of
birds, bats and other wildlife in the process. However, biomass and
biofuels are also carbon-based and also release carbon dioxide – and
their energy per volume is paltry, their energy efficiency deplorable,
compared to hydrocarbons.

A renewable energy future means scenic, wild and agricultural lands
become industrial zones and high voltage transmission corridors –
feeding urban centers where people will have lower living standards.

Environmentalists used to tell poor countries they could never have the
lifestyles of people in developed nations, as it wouldn’t be
sustainable. Now they say our living standards are unsustainable and
aren’t fair to the world’s poor. Therefore, their lives should be
improved a little via wind, solar and biofuel energy, while ours are
knocked down a peg via climate and sustainability regulations (except
for ruling elites).

Environmentalists and other liberals are also hardwired to be incapable
of acknowledging the countless health, welfare and technological
blessings that creative free enterprise capitalism has bestowed on
humanity – or to recognize the dearth of innovation by repressive
socialist regimes.

Liberals like to say Republicans want to control what you do in your
bedroom. But Democrats want to control everything you do outside your
bedroom – but for the noble, exalted purpose of changing genetically
coded human behavior, to Save the Planet for future generations. That
means unelected Earth Guardians must control the lives, livelihoods,
living standards, liberties and life spans of commoners and peasants,
especially in "flyover country."

Fossil fuel and fracking bans are part of that "fundamental
transformation." They will force us to use less oil and gas, but they
also mean we will import more petroleum from Saudi Arabia and Iran,
though not from Canada via the Keystone pipeline. Energy prices will
again climb into the stratosphere, more jobs will disappear,
manufacturing will shrivel, and royalty and tax revenues will evaporate.

The billionaire bounties that Hillary, Bernie and their supporters also
need to pay for all the free college, ObamaCare, renewable energy
subsidies, income redistribution and other "entitlements" will likewise
be devoured quickly, while millions more people end up on welfare and
unemployment rolls. The bills will simply be forwarded to our children
and grandchildren.

Meanwhile, despite any US bans, other countries will continue using
fossil fuels to create jobs and grow their economies. So total
atmospheric CO2 and greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to rise.

Of course, "climate deniers" and other members of The Resistance will
have to be dealt with. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Senator
Sheldon Whitehouse will pave the way on that. In the process, as Obama
and Clinton mentor Saul Alinsky put it in his Rules for Radicals, the
ruling elites will pick, freeze, personalize and polarize their targets.
They will repeat their allegations and maintain their pressure until
all resistance crumbles. Facts will be irrelevant. Power and perceptions
will rule.

Blue collar, middle class and minority families feel they are fighting
for their very survival, against policies and regulations that
profoundly impair their jobs, incomes and futures. Indeed, the governing
classes are actively harming the very people they claim to care the
most about – and actually killing people in the world’s poorest nations,
by denying them access to energy and other modern technologies.

That’s why Trump, Cruz, Carson and other "outsider" candidates have resonates. People are fed up.

Perhaps it’s time to borrow a page from Alinsky – Rule Four, to be
precise – and make "the enemy," the ruling elites, live up to their own
rules. Watching them scream and squeal would be most entertaining.

Via email

State Environmental Officials Say Obama’s EPA Has Overstepped Its Authority

The EPA, one state regulator says, has been "bypassing the guidelines
under the federal environmental statutes on how to implement changes."
(Photo: Jim Urquhart /Reuters/Newscom)
The Environmental Protection Agency has overstepped its legal authority
by imposing a regulatory agenda on the states, environmental officials
at the state level testified Wednesday to a Senate committee.

Randy Huffman, cabinet secretary at the West Virginia Department of
Environmental Protection, testified that the EPA’s flood of
environmental regulations since President Barack Obama took office in
2009 chipped away at the Founding Fathers’ intent of "cooperative
federalism" between the national and state governments.

Instead of consulting state regulators when establishing new policies,
Huffman said, EPA bureaucrats increasingly are imposing regulations
through what is called federal guidance.

"There’s two problems with this: EPA guidance further eliminates state
discretion, and it allows them to avoid the accountability and
transparency of rulemaking," Huffman testified before the Senate
Committee on Environment and Public Works.

When Congress passed the Clean Air Act more than 40 years ago, Huffman
said, lawmakers put states in charge of establishing procedures to meet
federal standards. In fact, over 95 percent of the environmental
regulatory duties in the U.S. are carried out by the states, he said,
citing the Environmental Council of the States.

The West Virginia official said Congress placed the primary
responsibility with the states because lawmakers knew that state
authorities would be more knowledgeable of local environments than D.C.
bureaucrats. Rather than following congressional intent, he said, EPA
regulators seized authority from the states.

"In the past seven years, states have been forced to digest more of
these federal takeovers … than were ever served in the prior three
federal administrations combined 10 times over," Becky Keogh, director
at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, testified.

Keogh said the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, regulations on the coal industry
designed to cut carbon emissions, is illustrative of the diminishment of
state sovereignty.

"The reality is that states are more pawn than partner," she said.

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who chairs the Committee on Environment and
Public Works, noted that the amicus brief he and 33 other senators along
with 171 House members filed against the plan last month at the D.C.
Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the court papers, the lawmakers argued that the plan violates the
Clean Air Act by coercing states to implement the EPA’s policies.

In early February, the Supreme Court halted the EPA’s implementation of
the Clean Power Plan until legal challenges from more than two dozen
states, four state agencies, and dozens of industry groups made their
way through federal appeals court.

Without minimum standards, she said, states that put more effort toward
creating environmental policies still would bear the consequences from
neighboring states that choose to do less.

"National environmental regulations establish an even playing field
between states, helping to prevent a regulatory race to the bottom in a
misguided attempt to attract economic development," Markowitz testified.

West Virginia’s Huffman agreed that federal standards should be
recognized, but said currently states are not given enough flexibility
to determine how to meet those standards. Further, he said EPA creating
those regulations through executive "fiat" imposed on states without
local input.

"The real problem for me as a regulator is the way [EPA] is going about
implementing these standards," he said. "They are bypassing the
guidelines under the federal environmental statutes on how to implement
changes."

Solar power is still more expensive and less efficient than fossil fuels

Employment in the US solar-energy sector is booming. More and more
workers are being employed to help build and maintain this lean, clean
and green technology. According to the latest figures from the Solar
Foundation, solar companies are employing workers nearly 12 times faster
than the overall US economy. Of all the jobs created in the US in 2015,
a total of one per cent were in the solar sector. Now, more than
208,000 Americans work in the solar industry, marking a 20 per cent
surge in a single year. If you track the figures as far back as 2010,
the increase in employment is a whopping 123 per cent.

Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm celebrated the new figures.
‘Americans want good-paying jobs, and solar jobs are growing 12 times
faster than the rest of the economy’, she said. ‘Our citizens are making
and installing those solar panels, and, with the right policies, the US
can create hundreds of thousands more solar jobs here at home. What
more needs to be said?’

A recent report by the Solar Foundation found that solar was employing
more people than other energy sectors: ‘The solar workforce is larger
than some well-established fossil-fuel generation sectors, such as the
oil and gas extraction industry, which shed 13,800 jobs in 2015 and now
employs 187,200 people.’ The report also boasted that ‘the solar
industry is already three times larger than the coal-mining industry,
which employs 67,929 people’.

However, these figures are misleading. It is important to note that, as a
relatively new energy industry, a lot of the new jobs created in solar
are in installation – 120,000 out of the 208,000, in fact. To create a
fairer comparison with other energy sectors, those involved in the
installation of solar panels must be subtracted from the overall figure,
leaving 88,000 people employed in the maintenance of solar-energy
equipment. The figures quoted in the Solar Foundation report merely
underline how inefficient and expensive solar is in comparison to fossil
fuels.

This has been proven by the Energy Information Administration, which
notes that, as of 2014, only 0.4 per cent of the US’s electricity
production came from solar energy. In contrast, natural gas provided 27
per cent of US electricity and coal provided 39 per cent. According to
the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 180,000 are employed in oil
and gas extraction, while coal employs roughly 68,000. Despite having
high employment numbers, solar energy provides a pitiful amount of
energy. Similarly, when compared to the oil and gas extraction industry,
the return on energy created per worker in the solar industry is tiny.

The crude Keynesian might say that solar power is producing more jobs,
and surely that is a good thing? But this is only true in the same way
that paying people to dig holes in the ground also creates jobs. The
problem is that it also creates costs. If more people are employed to
produce much smaller amounts of energy, the cost of energy goes up. Put
simply, more workers equals higher energy costs. A surge in solar
employment isn’t a one-off attempt to stimulate the economy. After all,
proponents of solar energy argue that it is the future of energy
provision in the US. If this is the case, the average American will end
up paying for more expensive energy, either at the point of consumption
or through the use of their taxes.

While the promise of higher employment rates may sound progressive,
increasing the amount of labour required to produce energy is a step
backwards. Throughout human history, the quest has been to find sources
of energy that reduce necessary human labour, from the early use of
waterways to the domestication of beasts of burden to the steam engine
and our short-lived nuclear age. Technology might one day make solar
energy more cost efficient, but the amount of jobs needed to produce it
at the moment suggests that it won’t happen any time soon.

CANADA: What's the REAL story behind the CBC's changing coverage of that climate change poll?

TOM HARRIS

According to Esther Enkin, the current Ombudsman of the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), she "has a mandate to determine whether
information content the CBC has produced fully respects CBC's journalism
policy."

With that thought in mind, let’s consider whether Enkin did her job
concerning a complaint I lodged on February 27 about the way in which
CBC radio covered a recent public opinion poll about climate change.
Here is the background.

In an apparent attempt to provide cover for the federal/provincial
global warming summit last week in Vancouver, a study authored by
researchers from University of Montreal and three American universities
was released on February 15. Entitled "The Distribution of Climate
Change Public Opinion in Canada," the study was reported on at about
10:00 am on February 22 by CBC on their web site.

However, Australian science presenter Jo Nova pointed out that
apparently the CBC later edited both the headline and the story to make
it more politically correct (see the CBC's explanation for those changes
here).

As Nova points out, at first the CBC headline read, "Climate change:
Majority of Canadians don’t believe it’s caused by humans," with
appropriate text to support this conclusion.

But, as Nova writes:

"The original message revealed a sacred truth that must not be spoken.
How would most Canadians feel about being forced to pay money to change
the weather if they knew most other Canadians also thought it was a
waste of billions?"

So, after the survey researchers complained, the headline was changed to
"Canadians divided over human role in climate change, study suggests,"
and significant parts of the piece rewritten, presumably to give more of
the message needed by politicians meeting in Vancouver.

So it appears our national broadcaster acted as a cheerleader for the global warming crusade. Nothing unusual about that.

What was different this time, however, was that, about mid-day on
February 22, Adam Stroud, Associate Producer of Toronto-based CBC
Syndicated Audio, reached out to me -- someone who vehemently opposes
the CBC’s belief that the science of climate change is "settled" in
favour of alarmism -- to comment on the meaning of the poll.

Stroud apparently did not know of my position and wanted local CBC radio
show hosts across Canada to speak with me about where scientists and
educators were "falling short" in popularizing the point of view CBC
holds dear.

I was also asked to discuss how they could do better "in informing the public on climate change."

It did not seem to occur to Stroud that many Canadians are skeptical of
the CBC’s stance because, as is well demonstrated by the Nongovernmental
International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), it is not supported by
the science.

NIPCC does not pull its punches, concluding in its November 2015 report "Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming":

"Probably the most widely repeated claim in the debate over global
warming is that ‘97% of scientists agree’ that climate change is
man-made and dangerous," the authors write. "This claim is not only
false, but its presence in the debate is an insult to science."

(Note: Joe Bast, CEO of the Heartland Institute, the publishers of the
NIPCC, discussed this valuable report on line on March 9, 2016 here.)

I accepted Stroud’s request, only to have him drop me later when one of
the researchers of the original poll became available for the interview.
(Or was is because he discovered my position on the issue?)

Hoping (naively it appears) for fair coverage of the survey, I
nevertheless sent Stroud information to help CBC interviewers properly
quiz the survey researcher. I explained:

"The first question in the poll is a trick that should be exposed by CBC interviewers, I suggest. It was:

"From what you’ve read and heard, is there solid evidence that the
average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past four
decades?"

Besides the fact that temperatures do not quote get warmer unquote; they
increase (or decrease); picking the last four decades is deceptive. All
scientists on both sides of the debate agree it has generally warmed in
the past 40 years. However, in the last 19 years, temperatures have
generally stayed stable, with the variation generally staying within the
uncertainty (see attached). The answer to the question, is it getting
warmer entirely depends on the time interval chosen.

In this video, Professor Carter shows that it has warmed since 16,000 years ago

He shows it has cooled since 10,000 years ago

He shows it has cooled in the last 2,000 years

He shows it has neither warmed nor cooled since 700 years ago

He shows it has warmed in the past 40 years

But not in the last 8 years (now 19 actually)

But, Prof. Carter also shows, the last two temperature intervals are not statistically significant and "absolutely not unusual."

So Carter concludes, "Is it warming or not - it depends on the time interval chosen."

I suggest the CBC point this out to the researchers. Alternatively, I would be happy to discuss this on air."

No one responded so, on February 27, I complained to Ombudsman Enkin,
about the situation. She replied that she had "no say in day-to-day
decision-making" concerning CBC programming and described her mandate as
above.

So, I sent to Enkin samples of where On the Coast’s coverage of the
climate survey violated CBC's journalism policy and asked her:

"Are you saying then that, in your opinion, the situation I described
below adequately fulfills the standards laid out in CBC's journalism
policy? A quick glace at CBC's journalism policy shows many places, a
small sampling of which I list below, where the situation described in
the e-mails below clearly violates CBC's journalism policy. Are you
saying that, in your professional judgement as CBC Ombudsman, these
standards were indeed followed in the circumstances I describe?"

Enkin did not answer my questions and again asked me to explain my concerns.

"Editorial judgement about what research is done or who is approached is
generally beyond the mandate of this office," she concluded.

So, I wrote to her: "If you want to just focus on one of these policy
violations, I suggest you take the following: Science and Health;
Implications and validity of results of scientific research

The CBC Vancouver interview obviously did not "reflect the true
implications" of the research and did not raise any of the problems with
the work that I sent to CBC Toronto (since CBC Toronto did not share
the information with CBC Vancouver even though they had many hours to do
so).

Back and forth it went, Enkin asking for me to explain my concerns, me
explaining them and then her asking again. I eventually gave up.

There are two main ways in which the relationship between man and nature
can be understood. Some contend that humans should reshape the natural
world for their own benefit, while others argue that humanity should
respect natural limits.

The first view can be traced to Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The brilliant
English philosopher, statesman and scientist ushered in the
Enlightenment view that humans should seek to dominate nature. By this
he did not mean that nature should be destroyed, as is sometimes alleged
by greens, but rather harnessed to meet human needs.

Many key Enlightenment figures, including the French encyclopédistes
Jean le Rond d’Alembert and Denis Diderot, recognised the key
contribution Bacon made to modernity. Immanuel Kant, the great German
Enlightenment philosopher, hailed Bacon in the preface to his Critique
of Pure Reason (1781).

There is a strong argument that Bacon created the preconditions for the
idea of progress. Writing in his classic study, The Idea of Progress
(1920), John Bagnell Bury said that, for Bacon, ‘the true object… of the
investigation of nature is not, as the Greek philosophers held,
speculative satisfaction, but to establish the reign of man over nature;
and this Bacon judged to be attainable, provided new methods of
attacking the problems were introduced’.

In retrospect, Bacon’s supporters were right to recognise the importance
of his insights. By reshaping and harnessing nature for our own
benefit, we have created a far more prosperous society. It is hard to
imagine the whole panoply of aircraft, cars, computers, electricity
grids, hospitals, schools, railways, roads, telephones, universities and
the like without it. Yet Bacon is virtually forgotten, except by the
green and feminist authors who deride him for allegedly advocating the
rape of nature.

In fact, mass prosperity and economic progress have brought enormous
benefits to humanity. There are many ways in which this improvement can
be measured, but perhaps the most striking is average life expectancy.
It has increased from about 30 in 1800 to over 70 today. That increase
alone – which it should be remembered is a global average – gives the
lie to the claim that only the wealthy have benefited from mass
affluence. An average of over 40 extra years of life is a considerable
feat, worthy of huge celebration.

Yet this view that humans should strive to dominate nature has fallen
out of favour. Since the 1970s, an alternative conception of man’s
relationship to nature has become dominant. This perspective holds that
humans should be constrained by natural limits. If they do not accept
such limitations, so the argument goes, we will suffer all sorts of
nasty consequences.

Historically, this view was most commonly associated with Thomas Malthus
(1766-1834). For Malthus, these limits were expressed in the form of
overpopulation. His Essay on the Principle of Population, first
published in 1798, argued that if the human population was not kept in
check, then there would be famine and war. Malthus’s essay has
influenced conservatives, miserablists and misanthropes ever since.

As it happens, Malthus’s argument was not original. Many had argued
before him that humans were constrained by natural limits. He gained
prominence because his views were a direct riposte to the optimism of
Enlightenment thinkers such as Nicolas de Condorcet, William Godwin and
Adam Smith. He restated the case for pessimism when it was on the
defensive, and sought to undermine faith in the power of human reason.

Over the past two centuries, Malthus’s predictions of doom have fared
terribly. The global population is over seven times the size it was in
his day, and yet people are far better off. Although the world is far
from perfect, the average person lives a longer, better and healthier
life than ever before. Under such circumstances it should not be a
surprise that Malthusians have been on the defensive for over a century
and a half.

Sadly, similar ideas have come to the fore again, albeit in a modified
form, since the 1960s. The emphasis this time around is not so much on
population – although that preoccupation has not disappeared – but the
idea of overconsumption. Contemporary green thinking has reinvented the
idea of a natural limit in a slightly different guise.

This notion is not confined to campaigning groups or self-proclaimed
green political parties. Since the 1970s, it has become mainstream among
Western governments and international organisations. Often the
discussion is posed in terms of the need for sustainability –
essentially a codeword for permanent austerity. From this starting
point, the green-minded deride popular consumption and argue that the
economic development of poor countries needs to be constrained for the
sake of the environment.

One of the main goals of Andrea Wulf’s widely acclaimed The Invention of
Nature is to rewrite the history of green thinking with the dashing
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) as its founder. Although he is
little-known in the English-speaking world – or at least he was until
Wulf’s book became a bestseller – the German scientist and explorer was a
much more attractive figure than Malthus.

He was perhaps the best-known scientist of his age – comparable in fame
to Napoleon – and a renowned explorer. He met and influenced a
tremendous range of historical figures, including German literary giants
such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, US president
Thomas Jefferson, and the South American revolutionary Simón Bolívar.
Charles Darwin, writing in his autobiography, credited Humboldt with
giving him the ‘burning zeal’ to study the natural sciences. Humboldt’s
best-known expedition was a six-year trip to Latin America, where,
despite facing many hardships, he did a systematic botanical study of
tens of thousands of plants in the region. Humboldt was also staunchly
anti-slavery and opposed to colonialism.

If Wulf’s book was a straightforward biography of an unfairly neglected
historical figure, it would deserve all of the plaudits. But its many
admirers seem either to ignore or fail to recognise the significance of
the ill-advised second goal the author set herself. In the prologue, she
states that she aims to ‘understand why we think as we do about the
natural world’. But, in that respect, the book is a failure. For one
thing, to achieve that objective it would be necessary to write an
entirely different book. Rather than focus on Humboldt, she would need
to examine critically the changing perspectives of the natural world. On
an even more basic level, the discussion of Humboldt’s life leads to a
neglect of green ideas that existed before him.

The main focus of Wulf’s study is what Humboldt called his Naturgemälde
(which can be roughly translated as his ‘painting of nature’). This was a
sketch drawn by Humboldt that showed that nature was a complex web in
which everything is connected. In that respect, it anticipated the idea
that contemporary greens sometimes refer to as Gaia.

Yet Wulf, rather than drawing out its significance, more or less asserts
that this is a foundational idea for green thinking. She fails to point
out that the claim that humans are merely part of nature, rather than
playing a special role, is a key element of anti-humanism. From a green
perspective, it is reasonable to see humans as fundamentally on a par
with any other animal. Indeed, from this vantage point, humans can be
seen as worse than any other animal as they are viewed as destroying the
world’s natural balance. In this way, the idea that humans are simply a
part of nature is just another way of arguing that humans should
respect natural limits.

As it happens, Humboldt himself was an empiricist rather than someone
with a broader interest in philosophical issues. His Naturgemälde was
simply an attempt to describe nature as he saw it. Unlike Malthus, he
did not draw out any overt political views from his conception of
nature. Wulf is essentially reading history backwards when she
classifies Humboldt as a green thinker.

This unfortunate tendency of projecting the present on to the past is
also apparent in the several references she makes to climate change. She
may be right in arguing that Humboldt was the first scientist to
recognise that humans can alter the climate. However, this claim shows
that she fails to recognise what is distinctive about the contemporary
debate. Even most of those derided today as ‘climate deniers’ would
accept that human action can modify the climate. The distinctive feature
of the current green orthodoxy is that it contends that a rapacious
humanity is laying the ground for catastrophic climate change. It
overestimates the extent to which humans cause problems and
underestimates our capacity to devise solutions.

The Invention of Nature therefore works as a fascinating biography, but
it is a total failure in its second stated goal of exploring how humans
understand the natural world. It is a misguided attempt to rewrite the
history of green thinking with the adventurer and scientist Humboldt as
its founder. It fails to understand what is distinctive about green
thinking or appreciate that its intellectual antecedents predate
Humboldt.

The multi-authored Ecomodernist Manifesto represents an alternative
attempt to put a positive spin on environmentalism. Its writers concede
that economic progress has brought enormous benefits, but contend that
it is right to hold on to an environmentalist ideal.

To maintain this position, they essentially split the idea of natural
limits in two. They argue that humans should reduce their impact on
nature, but they do not need to live in harmony with it: ‘We affirm one
long-standing environmental ideal, that humanity must shrink its impacts
on the environment to make more room for nature, while we reject
another, that human societies must harmonise with nature to avoid
economic and ecological collapse.’

It is hard to see how such a position is tenable. Economic and social
progress depend precisely on humanity increasing its impact on nature.
We need to enhance our control over the natural world, rather than step
back from it. Hunger, disease and even straightforward scarcity still
present formidable challenges. Even tackling climate change, to the
extent it is a problem, will demand enhancing the technological powers
of humanity, not scaling back.

The Ecomodernist Manifesto’s writers attempt to square this circle by
advocating what they call a ‘decoupling’ of human development from
environmental impacts. That means allowing humans to flourish, while
protecting nature at the same time. But couching the arguments in this
way blurs a key distinction. It may be that humans decide, for example,
that they want to leave some of the planet as wilderness. But that
should be on the basis of what is in the interests of humanity, rather
than a belief in the need to respect natural limits.

By couching the manifesto in such pragmatic terms the authors manage to
avoid the overt miserablism of much green thinking. However, there are
clear signs that anxiety about economic progress is lurking not far
beneath the surface. For example, the manifesto talks of the need to
bolster resource productivity – the efficiency with which raw materials
are harnessed – but it avoids any mention of labour productivity. Yet it
is labour productivity – the amount that can be produced for each hour
or day of human labour – that is key to economic progress. To abolish
scarcity on a global scale – in other words, to make everyone affluent –
would require a huge boost to average levels of labour productivity.

A related problem is indicated by the references to alleviating poverty.
At first sight, this seems unobjectionable. Who could be against such a
goal? But the manifesto focuses on reducing the most extreme forms of
material deprivation and, by implication, eschews the goal of prosperity
for all.

Ecomodernism cannot work as a coherent vision because green thinking is
fundamentally opposed to modernity. A truly modern vision has to be
based around the needs of humanity. It makes no sense to talk about the
planet – which, when it comes down to it, is basically just a lump of
rock – as if it has its own independent interests. The planet is not,
and cannot, be a conscious being.

The ecomodernists are simply trying to give green thinking a makeover.
They are playing down its anti-human premises and blurring its negative
consequences. They are repackaging a miserablist and misanthropic
outlook in a bid to make it seem palatable.

Now, more than ever, it is important to insist on a humanist conception
of the relationship between man and nature This means insisting that
humans should not constrain their ambition and creativity for the sake
of the natural world. On the contrary, we owe the enormous gains we have
made to our success in bolstering our control over nature. If anything,
we need to take this process even further, rather than scaling back.

Perhaps it is also time to rehabilitate the reputation of Francis Bacon
and his immense contribution to modernity. Without his insight, that
humans should strive to dominate nature, we would all be far worse off.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

13 March, 2016

New Report Says Science Can Estimate Influence of Climate Change on Some Types of Extreme Events

"For years scientists have given almost a rote response to the
question of whether an instance of weird weather was from global
warming, insisting that they can't attribute any single event to climate
change. But "the science has advanced to the point that this is no
longer true as an unqualified blanket statement," the National Academies
of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has reported". So says good
ol' Seth Borenstein of AP. The Academy press release below tells more.

But
the whole thing is just climate theology: untestable guesswork.
The most basic element of science is testability. If a proposition is
not testable, it is not science. When the Warmists can make
accurate predictions, their propositions will have been successfully
tested, but they have never managed to do that. The estimates below can
be challenged by other estimates but that is still proof of nothing

It is now possible to estimate the influence of climate change on some
types of extreme events, such as heat waves, drought, and heavy
precipitation, says a new report from the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The relatively new science of
extreme event attribution has advanced rapidly in the past decade owing
to improvements in the understanding of climate and weather mechanisms
and the analytical methods used to study specific events, but more
research is required to increase its reliability, ensure that results
are presented clearly, and better understand smaller scale and shorter
duration weather extremes such as hurricanes and thunderstorms, said the
committee that conducted the study and wrote the report.

"An increasingly common question after an extreme weather event is
whether climate change ‘caused’ that event to occur," said committee
chair David W. Titley, professor of practice in meteorology and founding
director of the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at the
Pennsylvania State University. "While that question remains
difficult to answer given all the factors that affect an individual
weather event, we can now say more about how climate change has affected
the intensity or likelihood of some events."

Extreme event attribution is a fairly new area of climate science that
explores the influence of human-caused climate change on individual or
classes of extreme events compared with other factors, such as natural
sources of climate and weather variability. The science typically
estimates how the intensity or frequency of an event has been altered by
climate change and provides information that can be used to assess and
manage risk, guide climate adaptation strategies, and determine
greenhouse gas emissions targets. For example, in the wake of a
devastating event, communities may need to make a decision about whether
to rebuild or relocate and need input on how much more likely or more
severe this type of event is expected to become in the future.

Some extreme event attribution studies use observational records to
compare a recent event with similar events that occurred in the past,
when the influence of human-caused climate change was much less.
Other studies use climate and weather models to compare the
meteorological conditions associated with an extreme event in simulated
worlds with and without human-caused climate changes. The report
finds that results are most reliable when multiple, different methods
are used that incorporate both a long-term historical record of
observations and models to estimate human influences on a given event.

The most dependable attribution findings are for those events related to
an aspect of temperature, for which there is little doubt that human
activity has caused an observed change in the long-term trend, the
report notes. For example, a warmer climate increases the
likelihood of extremely hot days and decreases the likelihood of
extremely cold days. Long-term warming is also linked to more
evaporation that can both exacerbate droughts and increase atmospheric
moisture available to storms, leading to more severe heavy rainfall and
snowfall events. However, temperature alone does not fully
determine the probabilities of extreme events. Attributing
specific extreme events to long-term climate change may be complicated
by factors such as natural long-term fluctuations in the ocean surface
temperatures.

Statements about event attribution are sensitive to the way the
questions are framed and the context within which they are posed, the
report says. For example, choices need to be made about defining
the duration of the event, the geographic area impacted, what physical
variables to study, what metrics to examine, and what observations or
models to use. These assumptions and choices can lead to large
differences in the interpretation of the results, and should be clearly
stated.

The committee supported continued advancements in weather and climate
modeling, and noted that focused research on weather and climate
extremes would improve event attribution capabilities. In
addition, community standards for attributing classes of extreme events
would make it easier to compare results from multiple studies.
Objective event selection and definition criteria could reduce potential
selection bias and help elucidate how individual events fit into the
broader picture of climate change.

Event attribution is retrospective, but the report calls for the
development of predictive weather-to-climate forecasts of future extreme
events that account for natural variability and human influences.
This could be based on concepts and practices within the Numerical
Weather Prediction framework, including routine verification of
forecasts using observations and rigorous approaches to improving the
forecast system.

"There's never been a time when the climate has not changed," Sen. Marco
Rubio said at Thursday night's Republican debate in Coral Gables,
Florida.

"I think the fundamental question for a policy maker is, is the climate
changing because of something we are doing, and if so, is there a law
you can pass to fix it?"

Rubio, addressing concerns about flooding in Miami, said it's caused by
two things: "Number one, south Florida is largely built on land that was
once a swamp. And number two, because if there is higher sea levels or
whatever -- it may be happening -- we do need to deal with that through
mitigation. And I have long supported mitigation efforts.

"But as far as a law that we can pass in Washington to change the weather, there's no such thing."

Rubio said current and proposed legislation addressing climate change "would be devastating for our economy."

He also criticized the Obama administration's "war on coal."

"Let me tell you, who is going to pay the price of that? Americans are
going to pay the price of that. The cost of doing that is going to be
rammed down the throats of the American consumer, the single parent, the
working families who are going to see increases in the cost of living,
the businesses who are going to leave America because it's more
expensive to do business here than anywhere else.

"And you know what passing those laws would have -- what impact it would
have on the environment? Zero, because China is still going to be
polluting and India is still going to be polluting at historic levels.

"So, I am in favor of a clean environment. My children live in South
Florida. My family is being raised here. I want this to be a safe and
clean place, but these laws some people are asking us to pass will do
nothing for the environment and they will hurt and devastate our
economy."

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said he believes that humans do contribiute to
climate change. He advocates "all the sources of energy," including
solar, wind and renewable energy.

"Battery technology can unleash an entirely different world," he said.

Nevada's home solar business is in turmoil as the state's Public
Utilities Commission starts to phase out incentives for homeowners who
install rooftop solar panels

"Sustainable" needs lots of taxpayer money -- or it isn't sustained

Some of the largest solar companies have stopped seeking new business in the state and laid off hundreds of workers.

Even for small solar installers, this once-booming business has slowed
to a trickle. The warehouse at Robco Electric in Las Vegas was filled to
capacity with pallets of solar panels stacked high last year. Now, it's
nearly empty.

"The PUC made a decision and it just devastated our industry," says
Robco President Rob Kowalczik. He's all business when talking about how
the PUC sided with the utility and pretty much killed off residential
solar in Nevada. But when it comes to his workers, he chokes up.

"The hardest thing is to lay people off," says Kowalczik. So far, his
company has let 25 people go. The solar division of his company is down
to a few salespeople and one installation crew.

One of the 25 is Connie Berry. She was just a few months into her job as
an installer for Robco. Now, she's looking for work in the construction
business, but she holds out hope her solar job will come back.

"It's been two months now since I got laid off, and I was hoping to get a
call back. ... I got my tools. I'm ready to go," says Berry.

In front of Robco Electric, you're more likely now to see the company's
sales cars parked in the middle of the day. Sales and marketing manager
Tim Webb says last year they would have been out chasing down new leads
all day. He says there were a lot of other solar companies on the road,
too.

"It was kind of like the solar gold rush here. All these companies
flocked into town, set up an office and sold systems. Now they're gone.
There's just a few of us remaining," says Webb.

Companies like SolarCity say they were left with no choice but to stop
doing business in Nevada when the PUC changed the rules for something
called "net metering."

Net metering allows homeowners with solar panels to sell excess
electricity they generate to the utility at retail rather than wholesale
rates. It's a great deal for homeowners because they can do something
good for the environment and save money on their energy bills.

But every kilowatt generated on someone's roof is one less the local
utility sells. And utilities use that ratepayer money to maintain the
electrical grid.

In this case, the local utility, NV Energy, is owned by Warren Buffett's
company Berkshire Hathaway. During an interview with CNBC last month,
Buffett echoed an argument utilities across the country have been
making: When solar customers don't pay to maintain the power grid, that
leaves everyone else to pick up the tab.

"We do not want the nonsolar customers, of whom there are over a
million, to be subsidizing the 17,000 solar customers," Buffett said,
talking about NV Energy's customers in Nevada.

Buffett said NV Energy can produce solar power from large, centralized
plants for less than it costs to buy electricity from rooftop solar
customers under the old net metering rules.

"We do not want our million plus customers who do not have solar to be
buying solar at 10.5 cents [per kilowatt hour] when we can churn it out
for them at 4.5 cents," he said.

SolarCity co-founder and CEO Lyndon Rive says utilities like NV Energy are just trying to protect their monopolies.

"They want to deploy the infrastructure. They do not want to let
consumers deploy that infrastructure because then they don't get a
regulated rate of return on that infrastructure," says Rive.

Rive wants big changes for the country's power grid. Instead of central
generators delivering electricity out to customers, he imagines a grid
where customers produce their own power and compete with the local
utility. Under Rive's vision for the grid, there's a smaller role — and
less profit — for utilities.

"We need them to manage the lines and let the rest be a competitive
market. Competition will drive innovation, which will then create
products that we couldn't even think of today," he argues.

The big solar companies haven't given up completely on Nevada yet.
SolarCity and others plan to challenge the changes to net metering,
first in the courts and then with a ballot referendum in November.

The question now is whether Nevada's experience will spread to other
states. Solar advocates successfully preserved incentives next door in
California. Now they're focused on another sunny state, Arizona, where
the next battle over residential solar incentives appears to be heating
up.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledged Wednesday that there have
been discussions within the Department of Justice about possibly
pursuing civil action against so-called climate change deniers.

"This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it
and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the
criteria for which we could take action on," Lynch said at a Senate
Judiciary Committee hearing on Justice Department operations.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) raised the issue, drawing a comparison
between possible civil action against climate change deniers and civil
action that the Clinton administration pursued against the tobacco
industry for claiming that the science behind the dangers of tobacco was
unsettled.

"The similarities between the mischief of the tobacco industry
pretending that the science of tobacco’s dangers was unsettled and the
fossil fuel industry pretending that the science of carbon emissions’
dangers is unsettled has been remarked on widely, particularly by those
who study the climate denial apparatus that the fossil fuel industry has
erected," Whitehouse said.

"Under President Clinton, the Department of Justice brought and won a
civil RICO action against the tobacco industry for its fraud. Under
President Obama, the Department of Justice has done nothing so far about
the climate denial scheme," Whitehouse added.

"A request for action by the Department of Justice has been referred by
you to the FBI. My question to you is other than civil forfeitures and
matters attendant to a criminal case, are there other circumstances in
which a civil matter under the authority of the Department of Justice
has been referred to the FBI?" he asked.

"Senator, thank you for raising that issue, and thank you for your work
in this area. I know your commitment is deep. This matter has been
discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to
the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we
could take action on. I’m not aware of a civil referral at this time,"
said Lynch.

"I will look into that and get back to you, but I’m not aware of a civil
referral outside of the one that you just raised," added Lynch.

"Are there any civil cases with the United States as plaintiff within
DOJ’s civil division in which the FBI is preparing the case for the
civil division?" Whitehouse asked.

"Are you regarding climate change issues?" Lynch asked.

"Regarding any matter," Whitehouse asked.

"I couldn’t give you that information right now in terms of whether or not—" Lynch responded.

People on the Left may think they see a difference between Hillary
Clinton and Bernie Sanders as the two duke it out for the Democrat
nomination, but those of us with common sense and constitutional
principles only see two peas from the same pod.

Sanders has made no bones about his desire to grow the government to
such an extent that it basically runs the means of production in this
country. He’s a socialist, and that’s how socialists think. Clinton has
pretended to embrace a (slightly) more laissez faire view of the economy
that would allow business to take more care of itself. But that’s
coming from a candidate who advocates lavish corporate welfare through
the Export-Import Bank. Poor Boeing can’t compete without massive
taxpayers subsidies, don’t you know.

Sunday’s debate was a good example of the commonality that exists
between the two leftists. Sanders was asked about hydraulic fracturing,
or "fracking" — the process by which American energy companies have
produced a glut of oil and natural gas, thereby saving individual
consumers hundreds of dollars a year. Sanders didn’t miss a beat, saying
he does not support fracking and would ban the practice outright.
Clinton’s answer was more nuanced on its face, but came out the same
way.

Take a gander at this tripe from candidate Clinton: "You know, I don’t
support it when any locality or any state is against it, number one. I
don’t support it when the release of methane or contamination of water
is present. I don’t support it — number three — unless we can require
that anybody who fracks has to tell us exactly what chemicals they are
using. So by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not
think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue
to take place. And I think that’s the best approach, because right now,
there are places where fracking is going on that are not sufficiently
regulated."

In short, after a bizarre and half-hearted paean to federalism, Clinton
went on to conclude she intends to regulate fracking out of existence
just like Barack Obama has done with the coal industry. But that is an
utterly foolish move.

The low gas prices that Obama has taken credit for are largely a result
of fracking. Again, the practice makes natural gas and oil cheaper to
extract and energy more affordable. The Wall Street Journal reports that
the average price of natural gas dropped close to 60% between 2008 and
2012. Furthermore, consumers have saved between $63 and $248 billion in
2013 alone, according to the Institute for Energy Research, and the
savings continue to add up. The IER reported that without fracking,
crude oil would cost $12 to $40 per barrel more. Not to mention that
we’d be paying foreign countries for more oil.

These savings have been most beneficial to the poorest families in the
country because they spend a larger part of their income on energy and
transportation than wealthier families do. At a time when energy prices,
like health care costs, are rising so fast they threaten the financial
well-being of millions of families, any relief is welcome. And that’s
particularly true of the relief at the gas pump coming from fracking.

Even the EPA, the ungodly monster that has become the principal tool for
the Left’s forcible conversion of the American economy, has obliquely
supported fracking. A draft report the agency published in June last
year states, "We did not find evidence that [fracking] mechanisms have
led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water sources in the
United States."

Clinton is having none of it. She has decided to go after the ecofascist
vote and drive yet another clean, economical energy source into
oblivion. Her proposals will drive up energy costs, but she doesn’t
care. After all, it suits her politically, and she’s not exactly dead
broke either. When was the last time she drove herself anywhere or
filled up her gas tank? Or worried about whether she could pay her
heating bill?

She remains shockingly unconcerned about the impact her policies would
have on one of the constituencies she is supposedly looking out for.
But, then again, it’s not about how Clinton can help. It’s about what
her supporters can do to help her.

A group of 13 climate protesters, who broke into Heathrow airport and
occupied a runway to stop planes from taking off, have narrowly avoided
jail. The six women and seven men were given suspended jail terms of six
weeks, meaning they will avoid prison completely if they stay out of
trouble for 12 months. In a video on the court steps, the protesters,
known as the Heathrow 13, promised they ‘would be back’, and suggested
they were victims of a miscarriage of justice, even though the group had
tweeted photographs of themselves in the act of committing the crime.

One thing that was immediately noticeable was just how posh they all
were. Almost all of them had master’s degrees and PhDs. One was a lawyer
working for a climate charity, who managed to obtain a character
reference from Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party. These
were well-connected, educated people who made a decision to cause a
major disruption that affected a large number of people. Their
demonstration meant that 25 flights had to be cancelled.

Now, I would not have celebrated if the protesters had been jailed. But I
do think that this contemptuous, sneering expression of elite climate
snobbery was criminal. These were not downtrodden political prisoners
being abused by the system – they were foppish middle-class climate
snobs who thought that the law should not apply to them.

They did not want to accept responsibility for what they had done. They
thought that their particular mode of politics was so important, so
vital, that it had to be imposed on ignorant holidaymakers for their own
good. And they even argued during their trial that their actions were
‘reasonable, proportionate and necessary to prevent death and serious
injury via air pollution and climate change’. In other words, their
defence was that they should be able to do what they think is right no
matter how it impacts on the nasty people who want to go on holiday.

So if these protesters had been jailed, this would not have been any
kind of miscarriage of justice. They were guilty. And this was not the
first time some of the protesters had been up before the courts in
relation to climate protesting: one had a previous conviction for
aggravated trespass and others had cautions and warnings relating to
climate protesting. While Oxfam announced that the sentences were
‘harsh’, they were in fact remarkably lenient. This is especially true
given that many of the group had previous convictions.

The contemptuous nature of the protest made it all the more galling that
the protesters received high-profile support. Bennett tweeted that
avoiding jail was ‘justice’. Others called the 13 ‘heroic’, and said we
should all be grateful for their ‘sacrifice’. Considering the
demonstrations of this tedious middle-class mob were aimed squarely at
us, the cheap-flight-hopping masses, it’s hard to imagine a more brash
expression of contempt.

No doubt this won’t be the last we see of the Heathrow 13, who will
probably continue to find new and equally stupid ways to disrupt the
lives of normal people. No doubt they will continue to rely on their
posh mates and gangs of earnest supporters to bail them out of trouble.
No doubt they will continue to try to avoid taking responsibility for
their actions. So, as a society, perhaps we should impose our own
punishment: to become stronger in our resolve to defend the things these
people despise. We should fly more, and fight for the right for more
people to be able to fly more. Maybe then the Heathrow 13 will finally
get the punishment they deserve.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

11 March, 2016

Earth's 'delicate balance' has shifted: Emissions now far outweigh the amount of CO2 the planet can absorb, study finds

What is claimed below may well be true but there is no demonstration that it has any effect on global temperature

Despite claims and reports blaming global warming on human activity, it
has reached a point where Earth is itself contributing to climate
change.

Until now, the Earth's landmass had been considered a 'sink' for carbon
dioxide, soaking up some of the emissions of the greenhouse gas from
human activity.

But after being overwhelmed by other greenhouse gas emissions,
scientists now believe the land has reached saturation point and the
emission of gas from plants, for example, is contributing to global
warming.

In a new study, an international team of researchers has demonstrated
that emissions of methane and nitrous oxide have 'overwhelmingly'
surpassed the land's ability to soak up carbon dioxide.

They suggest that this saturation means the land may now actually be contributing to climate change, instead of slowing it down.

The scientists looked at the 'biogenic fluxes' of the three main
greenhouse gases over the last three decades, and subtracted out
emissions that existed in pre-industrial times.

These biogenic sources include gas emitted by plants, animals, and
microbes, such as methane produced by wetlands, and nitrous oxide
released by soil.

But the amounts of these gases have been changed by human activity, plus new sources created by sewage, fertilisers, and cattle.

The scientists added up all the biogenic emissions of carbon dioxide,
methane, and nitrous oxide, then subtracted those that occurred
naturally.

The study did not include gas emissions from fossil fuel burning or natural gas production.

The surprise finding in the report is that human impact on biogenic
methane and nitrous oxide emissions far outweighs the impact on the
uptake of carbon dioxide.

In other words, they say this so-called terrestrial biosphere is now
contributing to climate change rather than mitigating climate change -
and it's all because of human action.

Scientists at the Carnegie Institute's department of global ecology in
Washington DC acknowledge that this runs counter to conventional
thinking.

They said that previous studies had focused only on carbon dioxide
rather than considering methane and nitrous oxide, and had emphasised
the mitigating effect of carbon uptake.

Lead author Hanqin Tain, director of the International Center for
Climate and Global Change Research at Auburn University, said: 'This
reveals for the first time that human activities have transformed the
land biosphere to become a contributor to climate change.'

They added that reducing the emissions of methane and nitrous oxide from
agriculture, particularly in southern Asia, could help to mitigate
climate change.

The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

If the land is losing its ability to soak up carbon dioxide as the scientists claim, then it marks a worrying trend.

Researchers have previously suggested that the world's oceans are losing their ability to absorb greenhouse gases.

This points to a shift in the fine global balance, where carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere by the land and oceans.

Alongside increased atmospheric concentration of the gas, the warming
oceans are not able to store as much carbon, meaning they are able to
soak up less carbon dioxide.

Meteorological winter is now in the books, and if you live anywhere in
the U.S. you won’t be surprised to learn it was a warm one. Virtually
every region experienced warmer, and in many cases much warmer, than
normal conditions. In fact, persistent intrusions of mild air,
promulgated by a super El Niño, pushed Winter ‘15-16 temperatures to
their seasonal warmest in at least 121 years. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says the mean temperature for
December, January and February was an impressive 4.6 degrees Fahrenheit
higher than average, and satellite measurements confirm that February’s
warmth dwarfed all previous records. However, that’s not to say it was
“America’s year without a winter,” as stipulated in a Washington Post
headline.

For example, numerous cities in the Mid Atlantic broke record snowfall
during January’s epic blizzard — humorously nicknamed “Snowzilla” — and
in February the Boston Globe reported, “Valentine’s Day in Boston was
the coldest on record for more than 80 years, as temperatures plunged to
levels that could even keep an intrepid Cupid indoors. Sunday morning,
the temperature plummeted to minus 9, with a windchill of minus 36,
shattering the record by 6 degrees.” That’s a remarkable feat in any
winter, but even more so considering the strength of El Niño. And let’s
not forget history. The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang notes,
“The warmth of this winter marked a stunning reversal from the previous
year in New England, when it witnessed one of its harshest winters on
record.” Extreme temperature swings are more common than we realize. Yet
how quickly we forget them…

There’s no question El Niño drove much of this past winter’s warmth. The
question, as always, is to what extent. Meteorologist Joe Bastardi
stipulates that we’re now in a test period. What comes up must come
down, and with La Niña looming, these trends should go the opposite
direction in the years ahead. But regardless of what the next few years
bring, what we’ll never know conclusively is how today’s trends compare
to the past thousands of years. Are we experiencing climate change? You
bet. Is it something to be so concerned about that we rearrange the
entire economy to combat it? Probably not.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) on Tuesday slammed the administration’s
handover of $500 million to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, asking a State
Department official how the “handout to foreign bureaucrats” could be
justified at a time when there were “real problems” that need to be
addressed at home.

Barrasso told Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Heather
Higginbottom he viewed the payment to the “new international climate
change slush fund” – the first installment of a $3 billion pledge – as
both a misuse of taxpayer dollars and a violation of legislation that
prohibits federal agencies from spending federal funds in advance or in
excess of an appropriation.

“It appears to be latest example of the administration going around
Congress because the American people don’t really support what the
president is doing with this initiative,” he said.

Higginbottom, appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
confirmed that an agreement for the $500 million had been signed on
Monday.

“We have reviewed our authorities and made a determination that we can
make this payment to the Green Climate Fund,” she said. “We do not
believe we are in violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act, and clearly our
lawyers and others have looked at our authorities and our abilities to
do this.”

“I firmly oppose what the president is doing here and this misuse, I
believe, of taxpayer dollars, I think completely in violation of the
law,” Barrasso told her.

“The United States’ national debt currently is $19 trillion. We have
struggling communities across this country in need of help,” he said.

“There was a debate in Flint the other night and I just think it’s hard
to explain to taxpayers in struggling communities across our country –
even places like Flint – that the president and this administration is
willing to give $500 million as a handout to foreign bureaucrats instead
of addressing real problems here at home.”

The GCF is designed to help developing countries curb greenhouse gas
emissions and cope with challenges attributed to climate change, such as
floods, drought and rising sea levels. President Obama in November 2014
pledged $3 billion for the initiative, which aims to raise $100 billion
a year globally from public and private sources by 2020.

Barrasso noted that Congress has not authorized or appropriated any
funding for the GCF, and that the most recent fiscal year appropriations
bill also “specifically prohibited the transfer of funds to create new
programs.”

He asked Higginbottom how the administration was able to divert and reprogram funds to meet Obama’s pledge.

“We reviewed the authorities and opportunities available to us to do
that, and believe we are fully compliant with that,” she said. “I’ll be
happy to follow up with you and your staff.”

‘Nothing is overfunded’

Barrasso asked what accounts had been overfunded to the extent that
allowed the State Department to divert $500 million away from them, to
the GCF.

Higginbottom pointed out that the administration asked for funding for the GCF in both its FY 2016 and FY 2017 requests.

“As we do our budgeting process we didn’t look around and say ‘Where are
excess funds we can put in this?’ We built it into our budget request,”
she said.

“What exact accounts were then overfunded to be able to move the money out?” Barrasso pressed.

“Nothing is overfunded,” Higginbottom replied. “We looked across the
appropriations bills and made allocations based on what our budget was
and what resources were provided to us.”

The GCF currently has $10.3 billion in pledges from more than 40
governments. Aside from Obama’s $3 billion pledge, the next biggest ones
have come from Japan ($1.5 bn), Britain($1.2 bn) and Germany ($1.0 bn).

Last year, Republican lawmakers threatened to block funding for the fund
unless the U.N. climate agreement reached in Paris last December was
submitted to the Senate for ratification.

Barrasso and 36 other GOP senators warned the president that they would
block taxpayer funds for the GCF “until the forthcoming international
climate agreement is submitted to the Senate for its constitutional
advice and consent.”

The administration maintains that the agreement reached in Paris does not require additional Senate advise and consent.

Nonetheless, when Congress passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill days
after the Paris deal was finalized, the package neither blocked nor
included funding for the GCF.

Asked at the time whether the administration would as a result be able
to repurpose funds for the GCF under the omnibus, White House press
secretary Josh Earnest replied that, “based on what we have reviewed so
far, there are no restrictions in our ability to make good on the
president’s promise to contribute to the Green Climate Fund.”

A paper published today in the Lancet claims that, thanks to climate
change, more than half a million people per year will die due to lower
food availability in 2050. It’s a shocking figure. But a bit of digging
quickly reveals that such claims should be treated with a whole tub of
salt.

The paper is the result of entering estimates into a model on a variety
of factors: how much temperatures and rainfall will change, the ability
of the world to grow more food and the health impacts of eating one kind
of diet over another. The headline results are that global food
production will be 3.2 per cent lower thanks to a warming world than it
would otherwise have been, with falls of four per cent in fruit and
vegetable consumption and 0.7 per cent in red meat consumption. The
world will produce a lot more food in 2050 than it does now, but not
quite as much it would have done if global temperatures had remained the
same. Or at least, that’s the claim.

First, a bit of perspective, with a few things we know. Currently, the
global death rate per year is estimated at 7.8 deaths per every 1,000
people, or 0.78 per cent per year. It is also estimated that the world
population will be around nine billion by 2050. So, if the death rate
remained the same, by 2050, roughly 70million people would die each
year. If the paper is correct, then based on these back-of-an-envelope
figures, climate change would increase deaths by less than one per cent
compared to a steady-temperature scenario.

Given that the figure of half a million is based on a whole host of
assumptions and estimates, and that computer models are always
imperfect, this tiny relative outcome is meaningless. The potential
inaccuracies far outweigh the end result. But it gets worse. The biggest
cause of death found (amounting to more than the final result) came
from a decline in fruit and vegetable consumption – 534,000. The
increased number of deaths from being underweight was cancelled out in
the model by the fall in deaths from obesity and being overweight,
presumably because chubby people would have less to eat. This assumes
that eating a certain amount of fruit and veg, or being obese, are huge
risk factors in and of themselves for health. These are contested ideas,
to say the least.

In any event, the paper doesn’t seem to have considered the proper
counterfactual – not just zero climate change, but the policies that
could achieve zero climate change. What would happen to food
availability in the future if we quickly dispensed with fossil fuels for
transport, agricultural machinery, fertilisers, pesticides, etc? Surely
that would reduce food production and raise prices? How does the
world’s diet look in that scenario?

But the purpose of this paper is not to give us a sensible guide to the
future. The aim is to produce a scary headline in order to galvanise
action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet a dash for low-carbon
alternatives would be much more likely to result in poorer diets and
mass malnutrition. What’s healthy about that?

As Michigan voters head to the polls on Tuesday, they should ask
candidates whether they will leave in place costly regulations that have
added thousands to the price of new cars and depressed sales for the
state’s iconic industry.

Federal regulations that force ever-increasing automobile fuel economy
standards cost consumers thousands of dollars more than what they save
on using less gas. These burdensome regulations also reduce new car
purchases and, therefore, auto worker employment.

How much more expensive are the gas mileage gains?

Scholars estimated that the new standards would add at least $3,800 to
the cost of a car in 2016 and at least $7,200 in 2025. This cost
includes the gasoline savings. Empirical Heritage Foundation research
supports those estimates. You get only what you pay for, and you have to
pay for what you get.

High prices are bad for consumers and bad for auto workers. At higher
prices, consumers demand fewer vehicles, and automakers hire fewer
workers.

Thus, fewer U.S. auto workers are employed now than in 2007 despite a
drop in wages. Although the regulations may not hurt many corporations
as much (because they can lay off workers and pass higher costs on to
consumers), consumers and auto workers have been the lab rats of this
failed environmentalist experiment.

Nor should they. Below is just another exercise in
cherrypicking by hack journalist Steve Mollman. The BoM says 2015
was only Australia's 5th hottest year so it's unlikely that much has
changed in two months.

An average implies events both
above and below the average so determined cherry pickers can always find
some places that are above average. It does seem that parts of
Southern Australia have had a lot of unusually hot weather in recent
months but some parts of Northern Australia have been unusually cool --
creating a balance that produced the BoM figure.

And if
it's only anthropogenic global warming that could have created the
unusual highs in some places, how come it was so hot in Sydney in 1790
(yes: 1790; not 1970) that birds were falling out of the trees with heat
exhaustion? Watkin Tench recorded it all. See here and also here for a confirmation of Tench's observations

The
guff below is just another example of the famous but illogical Warmist
dictum that hot weather proves global warming but cold weather does not
prove global cooling

The guff appeared in an online business
magazine called "Quartz". They claim that they publish "bracingly
creative and intelligent journalism with a broad worldview". On
the basis of the guff below I would say that they publish unintelligent
hack journalism with no originality and a conventional worldview

It’s late summer/early autumn in Australia, and few can remember the weather being so persistently hot this time of year.

Mildura, a small town about six hours to the northwest of Melbourne, has
suffered through eight straight days of extreme heat, with temperatures
of around 40 °C (104 °F). Sydney, meanwhile, has had a record 30-plus
straight days above 26 ? (79°F), breaking the previous record of 19 set
in 2014. Melbourne, a famously drizzly city, yesterday (March 8) endured
the hottest night on record for March, with temperatures lingering
around 30 °C (86 °F) and residents tossing and turning in their beds.

Climate change has been politicized all around the world, but perhaps
nowhere so intensely as Australia, where the previous prime minister,
the Liberal party’s Tony Abbott, was adamant in his denial of it, and
his successor, Malcolm Turnbull, is under pressure to hold hearings on
it.

Scientists are seizing on the heatwaves now hitting southeastern
Australia as proof that something is seriously amiss. They “have the
fingerprints of climate change all over them,” Will Steffen, a climate
science professor at Australian National University, told the Guardian.

Andrew King, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, told
News.com.au the heatwave could be attributed to climate change. “The
future is not looking good,” he said. “We’ll continue to get future
record-breaking heat extremes, and there will be hotter summers with
bigger impacts in Australia.”

In politics, however, there remains stiff resistance to the very idea of
manmade climate change. Many in the ruling center-right Liberal party
agreed when Abbott famously said in 2009, “The argument [on climate
change] is absolute crap… however, the politics of this are tough for
us… 80% of people believe climate change is a real and present danger.”

Although the current prime minister, Turnbull, was seen as a repudiator
of Abbott’s position when he took office last September, conservative
members of his Liberal party warned him not to abandon the party’s
stance of questioning the reality of climate change. Turnbull favors
cutting Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions—for which he has been
heckled by members of his own party.

Today (March 9) conservative members of the Liberal party in the state
of New South Wales formally called upon the Turnbull government to
organize a series of public debates to test climate scientists’ claims
about global warming.

The opposing Labor party has warned against the move. “If Mr. Turnbull
now bends to the will of the NSW Liberals and conducts public debates
about climate change,” said Mark Butler, a Labor MP, “he will solidify
his party as one of climate change skeptics.”

Victoria, meanwhile, is suffering from both blistering heat and a
drought. “It’s just hotter than normal,” one farmer and sheep rancher
told the Age, “and that might be the way we’re going, given climate
change.”

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

10 March, 2016

Another coverup: NOAA Radiosonde Data Shows No Warming For 58 Years

In their “hottest year ever” press briefing, NOAA included a
graph, which stated that they have a 58 year long radiosonde temperature
record. But they only showed the last 37 years in the graph.

Here is why they are hiding the rest of the data. The earlier data showed as much pre-1979 cooling as the post-1979 warming.

I combined the two graphs at the same scale below, and put a horizontal
red reference line in, which shows that the earth’s atmosphere has not
warmed at all since the late 1950’s

The omission of this data from the NOAA report, is just their latest
attempt to defraud the public. NOAA’s best data shows no warming for 60
years. But it gets worse. The graph in the NOAA report shows about 0.5C
warming from 1979 to 2010, but their original published data shows
little warming during that period.

Due to Urban Heat Island Effects, the NOAA surface data shows nearly one
degree warming from 1979 to 2010, but their original radiosonde data
showed little warming during that time. Global warming theory is based
on troposphere warming, which is why the radiosonde data should be used
by modelers – instead of the UHI contaminated surface data

Maine abounds in natural beauty. Historically there have always been
practical and impractical uses of the Maine geography and waters. In
recent years we have been brow beaten by a corrupt government philosophy
into allowing an ever increasing degree of impractical destruction of
Maine by the industrial wind industry, related power companies and
businesses.

The majority of Mainers have no idea how it has been happening, and they
are being told over and over that this is all needed to “combat climate
change,” and therefore it is all a “virtuous argument.” You don’t
agree? You’ll be demonized as a “denier” or worse. Never mind that the
record through emails shows that the proponents have colluded beyond
public purview for years to achieve their aims.

Big Wind — how did it happen here? May 8, 2007 our then-Gov. John
Baldacci foisted on Maine both a “Task Force on Wind Power Development
in Maine,” and eventually what became known as the (never debated by the
legislature!) “Expedited wind legislation,” LD 2283 in 2008, making
possible a flood of practically unstoppable industrial wind projects
planned for Maine. The industry began to ally with environmental groups
to push this mantra of “renewables & green energy,” and showered
some organizations and communities with funds to cement their
allegiances.

According to Greenwashing, money does a great job at quieting potential
critics when they see their agendas being funded by all this “green,”
and they have their virtuous argument — it is to save the planet from
“climate change.” Just ignore the thousands of dead eagles, and other
birds and bats … and as long as the tax breaks and DOE grants keep
rolling in to the developers.

Since 2000, we’ve been treated to the separation of electric power
generation from the transmission line side of the business because it
was said to be unfair and monopolistic to control both and it looked
good politically at the time.

After the expedited wind law (LD 2283) in Maine was passed, it needed to
be massaged into shape by the very industry it would benefit even more
with the help of their lawyers and cronies in the legislature. A
depressing 171 pages of this record is available to read online.

Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting did an excellent
investigative work on this back in 2010, which demonstrates the
pervasive corruption of these special interests in Maine.

In the 171 pages of documents, one sees how then-Senate President Justin
Alfond worked with the wind industry lawyers to concoct, and then try
to pass additional legislation that they wanted through LD 1750.
Amazingly, they failed to get the votes to pass it. A rare victory for
citizens and common sense.

Gov. Baldacci’s Public Utilities Commission chairman, Kurt Adams,
receives over a million dollars of stock options from First Wind while
still at the PUC. This gets little to no consideration the Maine media.

While still at the PUC, Adams is reported by the Maine Center for Public
Interest Reporting to have been interviewing at First Wind for
employment. Shockingly, he then transitions to First Wind as their new
Director of Transmission.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, the PUC begins to consider the $1.4
billion transmission facilities upgrade at CMP. This request was the
largest the PUC had ever handled to date, which they grant CMP. The
transmission upgrade is needed, according to CMP, to provide
transmission capacity and reliability to get power from Northern Maine
wind projects (extant and proposed) to out-of-state markets. A kiss for
the wind industry, financed by the ratepayers.

In the legislature, the Joint Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities
and Technology, known as EUT, helps out the industry and delays
consideration of virtually any citizen initiated bills opposing
Industrial Wind, calls for a study of wind energy issues, and then
ignores it. The co-chair at the time, John Hinck, squelches citizen wind
bills while his wife, Juliet Browne is the wind industry’s top attorney
in Maine. One supposes that could be just coincidence.

In 2009, Gov. Baldacci attends a trip to Europe, hosted by energy giant
Iberdrola (who now owns CMP), to gain a better understanding of the
useful intersection of government policy and the wind industry there. He
appears to very impressed and enthusiastic upon his return to Maine,
commenting then that current Maine laws prevent entities such as
Iberdrola that own transmission grids, which they do, from also owning
generation projects — wind — which they want to now. This is a problem
that he plans to work on getting resolved. No matter that in 2000 it was
dogma that this combination led to a monopoly.

Currently, the EUT is discussing this exact issue: LD 1513 An Act to
Clarify Laws Relating to Affiliate Ownership of Electric Generation
(Rep. Dion of Portland), with the proponents pushing for legitimizing
generation and transmission under one owner yet again.

Fast forward to 2016, with the quite unforeseen (and unjustifiable)
Congressional extension of tax breaks and production tax credits to
economically unsound wind and solar industries (see SunEdison and
Solyndra as paltry examples), the rush is on to nail those permits, get
the projects unstoppably blessed, and get government funds flowing from
the 1603 grant program.

Now more industrial wind projects are proposed for Maine to supply the
“green energy” demands of states south of us that don’t want — or allow —
wind turbines. Who in Maine really needs eagles or those pesky “visual
impact statements?”

Finally, congratulations to former Gov. Baldacci. In December, it was
announced that he is now the Vice Chairman of Iberdrola’s Wind Division,
Avangrid. What a surprise.

What if what we think we know about ecology and environmental policy is
wrong? What if U.S. environmental laws often make things far worse? What
if there were a better way to improve our natural (and human)
environment? Answering these questions and drawing out the implications
is the achievement of the new Independent Institute book, Nature
Unbound: Bureaucracy vs. the Environment, by Randy T Simmons, Ryan M.
Yonk, and Kenneth J. Sim—a detailed and hard-hitting critique of
hallowed, major U.S. environmental policies enacted since the 1960s.

The most celebrated environmental laws of the past fifty years, Nature
Unbound argues, have blocked a much better approach to conservation and
environmental quality. The Clean Water Act has slowed down progress at
state and local levels. The Endangered Species Act has undermined the
protection of threatened species. Policies to shield wilderness areas
from all human activities (even conservation management) undermine
biodiversity. And renewable energy legislation has mostly wasted
resources rather than conserved them.

These deeply flawed environmental laws, the authors argue, rest on two
faulty pillars: an outdated theory about ecosystems (the “balance of
nature” doctrine) and a mistaken view of the political process (a
childlike naiveté about electoral politics and government bureaucracy).
But Nature Unbound offers more than a critique of false assumptions and
flawed policies. It also offers a pathway toward sensible policies: six
bold principles to help us rethink environmental objectives, align
incentives with goals, and affirm the notion that human beings are an
integral part of the natural order and merit no less consideration than
earth’s other treasures.

As a governor, if your state was given the chance to defer millions,
possibly billions, of dollars in burdensome and unnecessary energy
mandates, would you accept it? Even some liberal governors would likely
answer in the affirmative, and happily at that. Unfortunately, in states
like Virginia, the opposite is true. Last month the Supreme Court
stayed implementation of the EPA’s power-grabbing Clean Power Plan
(CPP). But while the ruling was applauded by more than two dozen states,
Democrat Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe decided to ignore the warning
signals and overhaul his state’s energy sector anyway.

Writing in the Washington Examiner, attorney Terry M. Jarrett says,
“Virginia, for some reason, has chosen to move forward with the task of
rebuilding its entire power generation sector. This means the state will
still undertake the construction of new grid infrastructure, including
the many new transmission lines and towers needed to carry electricity
from planned wind and solar assemblies.” It’s a curious decision — one,
because CPP’s legal requirements were nullified (albeit temporarily but
hopefully permanently at a later date), and two, renewable technology is
nowhere near prime time. And keep in mind, nearly 30% of the state’s
electricity comes from coal. “The question,” Jarrett posits, “is why
Virginia would bear this cost when it is currently under no legal
obligation to do so.” Is it ostensibly to address “climate change”? If
so, consider that by the EPA’s own estimates the regulations would slow
global warming by just 0.02 degrees Celsius.

A court will eventually decide whether or not to strike down the Clean
Power Plan, but Gov. McAuliffe is looking beyond that. And he’s willing
to extract a hefty amount of tax dollars from Virginians to enact a
flawed energy policy. Since Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, voters
have ousted 11 Democrat governors. If McAuliffe isn’t careful, he could
become the 12th.

Far too often, government regulations are proven to be costly,
ineffective and of no benefit to economic growth — worse, they hamper
it. Yet bureaucrats in Washington wield their power to influence markets
and industries and for the most part, they get away with it because
either too many Americans don’t care or they just don’t know how much
these regulations cost.

Take fuel standards for instance. Government regulations on the auto
industry and on those who supply the fuel to run those cars have not
helped but hurt our nation’s economy. Furthermore, many in Washington
have used the agenda of combatting climate change as cause for
continuing or implementing more regulations — without any concern for
the economic ramifications of doing so.

Of the many regulations foisted upon our economy, one of the most costly
is the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. In a detailed
report, The Heritage Foundation offers some keen insight into the
government’s involvement with regulating the fuel standards by which
auto manufacturers must abide or pay hefty fines.

For starters, the intent of the federal government regulating fuel
standards was to decrease America’s dependence on foreign oil. Good
intentions, but the consequences have been staggering. The
cost-to-benefit ratio is unreasonable and even if the sole purpose of
the CAFE standards were to fight climate change there are miniscule
results.

In 2009, the Obama administration implemented regulations required by
Congress and as a result raised the CAFE standards by approximately nine
miles per gallon through model year 2016. Many economists warned of the
costs of regulating fuel standards. Yet despite their warnings, the
government opted for regulations. The pervasive argument seems to be if
you can’t tax it, regulate it. But regulation is just another form of
taxation. The fact that it’s harder for consumers to see is precisely
why government likes it so much.

With the increase in CAFE standards, there is a higher cost for
consumers. According to several economic scholars, the standards will
cost consumers an estimated $3,800 more per new vehicle. On top of that,
the average price of a vehicle in the U.S. is about $6,200 above trends
in new vehicle purchases in other parts of the world. The rise in costs
alone should arguably be enough to scrap the CAFE standards, but the
Environmental Protection Agency has stepped in and is now using the fuel
standards as a tool to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to
fight climate change.

Obama recently boasted that the change in fuel standards, which mandates
that the average fleet of new vehicles meets the 49.6 miles per gallon
mark by model year 2025, will reduce global temperatures by a whopping
.007 degrees Celsius by the end of 2016. By the year 2100, our great
grandchildren should see a decrease in temperature of .018 degrees
Celsius. In other words, like nearly every other climate change
regulation, the fuel standards won’t make a dent in the overall
temperature of our planet. Just ignore the mounting costs and move right
along.

There are several unintended consequences of the CAFE standards as well,
which essentially counters any reason for making them permanent to
fight climate change.

First, there is what is called the “rebound effect.” According to The
Heritage Foundation, “When consumers are forced to buy more
fuel-efficient vehicles, the cost per mile falls (since their cars use
less gas) and they drive more. This offsets part of the fuel economy
gain and adds congestion and road repair costs. Similarly, the rising
price of new vehicles causes consumers to delay upgrades, leaving older
vehicles on the road longer.”

Second, there is a high probability that millions of consumers will be
forced out of the new car market altogether simply because people will
not be able to afford the higher priced cars due to the fuel standards.

Finally, there is also the probability that the American Big Three
automakers — Ford, GM and Chrysler, the latter two of which taxpayers
bailed out a few years back — will see their corporate profits decline,
while foreign auto manufacturers' corporate profits increase.

Keep in mind that these CAFE standards are not the only hindrance to
American consumers. Requiring consumers to pump more ethanol into their
fuel tanks is another federal regulation on our transportation that is
both hurting consumers and harming the environment.

It’s past time that the government scrapped the fuel standard mandates
(among a host of other damaging regulations), but until we have a new
administration that values constitutionally limited government, little
will be done to change anything for the better. So consider this issue
when casting your vote.

Leave it to Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders' home state of Vermont to
demonstrate another case of government ineptitude. Beginning July 1, the
state will “require labels on all genetically modified foods produced
or sold within the state,” notes a Wall Street Journal editorial. And
for what? Despite there being thousands of positive studies on GMOs,
“consumers who see a ‘No GMO’ label near a ‘No TransFat’ mark might
think there is reason to avoid GMOs, though no evidence supports that
conclusion,” adds the Journal. Here’s something else to chew on:

“The Vermont scheme is more expensive than pasting a
sticker on a box of crackers. Ingredients would need to be segregated
from the grain elevator to the grocery store. No brand could label only
what sells in Vermont, lest an illicit bag of Cheetos cross the New
Hampshire border and incur the $1,000 a day fine.”

Like every regulation, the cost is actually passed down to consumers.
Companies may decide to ditch GMOs completely, which means resorting to
pricier ingredients. That in turn results in higher costs at the grocery
store. The Journal wryly notes, “Among the law’s defenders is
Democratic presidential unhopeful and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders,
and it’s rich to see the guy who rails against the 1% defending
Vermont’s 0.2% of the U.S. population dictating food prices for the
other 99.8%. Another irony is Sen. Sanders’s supposed loathing for
special interests: The Vermont law exempts milk and cheese, which is
great news for the state’s large dairy industry.”

The fear is this scheme will go mainstream: “Enter Kansas Senator Pat
Roberts, who is moving a bill to establish a voluntary federal program
for labeling GMOs. His proposal would pre-empt Vermont and direct USDA
to create a standard label that companies could choose to put on
products. This is unnecessary: USDA already runs a voluntary
GMO-labeling program, and it’s called the organic seal. But some 20
state legislatures are considering labeling bills, and the Roberts plan
would thwart a patchwork of state regulation — and might win 60 votes in
the Senate.” What’s worse — that lawmakers can’t find more important
things to fix, or that they believe Americans are too stupid to make
their own choices? If they are truly worried about hunger and poverty in
America, they would stop waging a war on a harmless process that makes
food cheaper and more readily available.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

The latest climate predictions show that both wet and dry places will experience more rainfall in the future

The study was carried out by Dr Markus Donat and his team at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Using a combination of observations and climate models, Dr Donat found
that extreme daily precipitation over the last six decades shows 'robust
increases' in both wet and dry areas.

He found that precipitation extremes have increased by about 1 to 2 per
cent per decade since 1950, in both wet and dry regions, and there are
'statistically significant' trends towards wetter conditions for both
total precipitation and extreme events.

Critically, the steady increases in rainfall were found to be directly related to the rise in global temperature.

With temperatures expected to rise further, according to climate models,
this will mean more rainfall everywhere - including places that have
historically been dry.

This surprise finding overturns what was previously expected.

When analysing local rainfall patterns, Dr Donat reports that 'a
wet-get-wetter, dry-get-drier pattern was not seen over most global land
areas.'

Projections show the trend of increasing rainfall is expected to continue until at least the end of the 21st century.

The researchers said this is due to the increased moisture content the atmosphere can carry as it becomes warmer.

While increased rainfall in the world's drought zones may be welcomed,
the researchers say this may not lead to more water being available
because it could evaporate quickly.

It might, though, lead to many more cases of flooding because these
regions do not have the right infrastructure to cope with extreme
rainfall.

Watch Now: Hannity on Fox News features exclusive clips of ‘Climate Hustle’: First Time Broadcast of Select Clips

“Climate Hustle” assembles an impressive group of experts in climate
science and policy, many of whom worked on the UN’s climate assessments,
but left after the UN ignored overwhelming evidence that contradicts
its position.

Nationally syndicated columnist Cal Thomas calls Climate Hustle
“tremendous” and says “anyone who still believes in ‘climate change’
after watching this film needs the type of reprogramming given to cult
members.”

Noted climatologist Dr. Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of
Technology, who is featured in the film, adds “Climate Hustle is a
refreshing and entertaining antidote to the sillier and alarming claims
about climate change and its impacts that people regularly hear from
politicians and the media.”

The chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources stated that the
Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) removal of a natural plug
sealing the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado last August was
“done on purpose,” challenging Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to
retract her previous testimony that the resulting blowout was “an
accident.”

Jewell, whose agency conducted an independent review of the
environmental disaster that affected three states, testified on Dec. 9,
2015: “We did not see any deliberate attempt to breach a mine. It was an
accident.”

But committee chairman Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) pointed out at a
congressional oversight hearing on Monday that according to a subpoenaed
email from one of Jewell’s own employees, EPA workers had deliberately
been removing parts of the Gold King Mine’s natural plug when the
blowout occurred.

“There was nothing unintentional about EPA’s actions with regard to
breaching the mine. They fully intended to dig out the plug and breach
it. It was a major mistake and due to a lack of engineering planning,
but it was done on purpose,” Bishop charged.

The Associated Press reported that a June 2014 EPA work order
acknowledged the possibility of a blowout at the abandoned mine that
“could cause a release of large volumes of contaminated mine waters and
sediment from inside the mine.”

The subpoenaed email was sent from Brent Lewis, the Abandoned Mine Lands
program lead at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), to senior BLM
officials on August 7, 2015 – two days after the disaster that sent
three million gallons of bright orange toxic wastewater rushing into
Colorado’s Cement Creek and Animas and San Juan Rivers.

Lewis had prepared a summary of the incident after talking to Steven
Way, EPA’s on-scene coordinator at the mine, who told him that EPA
employees were removing “small portions of the natural plug” from the
long inactive gold mine at the time of the blowout.

“On 8/5/2015, the EPA was attempting to relieve hydrologic pressure
behind a naturally collapse[d] adit/portal of the Gold King Mine. The
EPA's plan was to slowly drain and treat enough mine water in order to
access the inner mine working and assess options for controlling its
discharge. While removing small portions of the natural plug, the
material catastrophically gave-way and released the mine water,” Lewis’
email stated.

The email was one of thousands of heavily-redacted documents released on
February 11 by the Department of Interior - the same day the committee
released its own investigative report highly critical of both EPA and
DOI for a “morass of errors, half-truths, and outright falsehoods”
regarding the spill.

“The Committee’s oversight of the Gold King Mine disaster has revealed
that each of the three reports issued by EPA and DOI in 2015 contains
numerous errors and omissions and demonstrably false information,” the
committee report stated, including the “false claim that the EPA crew
was digging high when the plug somehow eroded on its own.

“Nevertheless, the EPA’s Internal Review concludes that the EPA crew
‘followed standard procedures of a well thought out work plan’ and that
‘the Adit blowout was likely inevitable.’ Cast in the most favorable
light, the EPA Internal Review sets forth the best possible explanation
from EPA’s perspective, but it is not the truth,” the committee report
stated.

Among many other omissions, DOI’s independent Technical Evaluation of
the blowout does not “explain how or why EPA failed to test for
hydrostatic pressure” in the abandoned mine before removing “the top
four feet of the plug,” the report added.

“The many problems with the Technical Evaluation...make Secretary
Jewell’s statement that she is proud of the report all the more
astounding.”

After months of debate and public comments, President Obama’s
controversial Clean Power Plan (CPP) was issued in August 2015 and
published in the Federal Register on October 23, 2015. But that is
hardly the end of the story. Instead the saga is just beginning — with
the ending to be written sometime in 2017 and the outcome highly
dependent on who resides in the White House.

The CPP is the newest set of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
regulations that the Atlantic states: “anchors the Obama
administration’s climate-change policy. It seeks to guide local
utilities away from coal-fired electricity generation, and toward
renewable energy and natural gas” — with a goal of reducing CO2
emissions from existing power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by
2030. States are required to submit implementations plans by September
6, 2016 with emission reductions scheduled to begin on January 1, 2022.

Immediately following the rule’s publication, a coalition of 24 states
and a coal mining company, led by West Virginia Republican Attorney
General Patrick Morrisey, filed a lawsuit to challenge the CPP. Morrisey
called it: “flatly illegal and one of the most aggressive executive
branch power grabs we’ve seen in a long time.”

The Hill reports: “They are asking the Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia Circuit to overturn the rule. They also want the court to
immediately stop its implementation while it works its way through the
courts.” Differing from the Cincinnati-based Court of Appeals for the
Sixth Circuit that in October issued a stay for the Waters of the U.S.
rule, on Jan. 21, 2016, the federal court refused to put a hold on
the CPP while the litigation proceeds. It did, however, agree to
expedite the case with oral arguments beginning on June 2.

Days later, Jan. 26, in an unusual move, the petitioners — which now
include 29 states (Nevada is the latest to oppose CPP, to protect
“Nevada’s vital tourism industry.” On Feb. 24, Attorney General Laxalt
filed a brief to highlight the federal agency’s overreach and disregard
for the rule of law associated with CPP.) and a large group of utility
companies and energy industry trade groups — turned to the Supreme Court
(SCOTUS). Morrisey acknowledged: “While we know a stay request to the
Supreme Court isn’t typical at this stage of the proceedings, we must
pursue this option to mitigate further damage from this rule.” Knowing
that SCOTUS has never before engaged in a case before a federal court
even heard the initial arguments, CPP supporters, like Sierra Club Chief
Climate Counsel Joanne Spalding, apparently felt confident, calling the
appeal: “another ‘Hail Mary’ challenge to the Clean Power Plan.”

Citing SCOTUS’ 2015 ruling that reversed the Mercury Air Toxics
Standards (MATS) rule, petitioners argued that the damage from MATS had
already been done by the time the decision came down. In a Client Alert,
international law firm Milbank — which works in the energy space —
said: “The EPA itself acknowledged that the ruling had virtually no
impact, as states had already largely complied with the regulation by
the time the Court’s order was issued.”

Despite the historic nature of the request, on February 9, in a 5 to 4
majority, SCOTUS granted an emergency stay of CPP. Milbank states: “The
issuance of stay signaled that five of the Supreme Court justices had
significant reservations about the EPA’s attempt to regulate emissions
from power plants in the way the CPP is currently designed. To grant the
stay, the Supreme Court must have found that there was a ‘fair
prospect’ that a majority of the Court would vote to reverse a judgment
if the D.C. Circuit were to uphold the CPP.” Morrisey agrees: “the
decision reinforces confidence in the broader challenge as the Supreme
Court found the coalition’s arguments strong enough to stop the EPA even
before the lawsuit concludes.” The victory means the EPA is prohibited
from implementing or enforcing the CPP until the D.C. Circuit issues a
decision on the challenge — which is expected as early as this fall.
FuelFix reports: “The conventional wisdom is the three-member court
panel will rule favorably for the White House.”

As 18 states opposed the application for the stay, whatever decision the
lower court reaches, most experts agree SCOTUS will eventually hear the
case — likely in 2017.

CPP opponents saw the stay as a sign SCOTUS might strike down the rule.
Seth Jaffe, a former president of the American College of Environmental
Lawyers, according to the Atlantic, sees it as an “ominous sign for the
regulations.” Jaffe said: “One has to conclude that five justices have
decided that the rule must go.”

Confidence ebbed, however, with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia —
just four days after the court’s unprecedented stay order. As a
conservative voice on the court, Scalia had a history of limiting
government regulation and was a scathing critic of EPA’s regulation of
greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on who fills the empty seat, and
when, the court’s decision could go one way or the other.

Regardless, the EPA is continuing to move forward and is encouraging
states to take voluntary steps toward compliance and is supporting those
who do.

States have reacted differently to the stay. Many states, such as
Massachusetts, Arizona, and Virginia are moving ahead with their plans.
Some are already well into their CPP compliance plans, with California
expected to submit its plan ahead of schedule. Ohio Public Utility
Commissioner Asim Haque, reports that they were “already close to
completion,” but the commission has put analysis on hold for now.

Texas, whose Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) shared the lead with
Morrisey on requesting the stay, is in a holding pattern. Toby Baker, a
commissioner on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, according
to FuelFix, said: “I’ve watched states get in front of their skis on
federal regulations, and then the regulations come out and they don’t
match. I do feel like the [clean power plan] will change from what it is
right now.”

Following the SCOTUS decision, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott
Walker issued an executive order prohibiting state agencies from doing
any work to prepare for the CPP until the stay expires. Citing “undue
burden” on state ratepayers and manufacturers, he argued that the rule
could have a “devastating impact.”

Because the SCOTUS stay halts enforcement of the CPP until the court
challenge concludes, and delays the EPA’s deadlines, Morrisey and
Paxton, in a February 12 letter to the National Association of
Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the National Association of Clean
Air Agencies, encouraged them to “put their pencils down.” They point
out: states “have no legal obligation to continue with spending taxpayer
funds on compliance efforts for a suspended and likely unlawful Power
Plan. …Any taxpayer dollars spent during the judicial review process are
unnecessary and likely to be entirely wasted.”

Pennsylvania Coal Alliance CEO John Pippy, a leading advocate for the
coal industry in his state, argues that there are “serious concerns
regarding the resources that will be wasted attempting to develop a
compliance plan, at the expense of the taxpayers, for a rule that may be
significantly altered or thrown out by the Federal Courts.”

With the court challenge coming up in a few months, last week, February
23, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate EPW
Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.), 34 Senators and 171
Representatives filed an amicus brief urging the Circuit Court to “block
the EPA’s attempts to transform the nation’s electricity sector.” As
the press release states, the lawmakers believe the rule “goes well
beyond the clear statutory directive.” It points out: “States will face
unprecedented new regulatory burdens, electricity ratepayers will be
subject to billions of dollars in compliance costs, and American workers
and their families will experience the hardship of job losses due to
power plant shutdowns, higher electricity prices, and overall
diminishment of the nation’s global economic competitiveness.”

Congressman Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) says he joined his colleagues in
filing the brief because “The EPA’s actions are clearly illegal and
violate the expressed intent of Congress.” He sees that his state has
been singled out. The initial proposed rule required South Dakota to
reduce emissions by 11 percent, but the final rule required a
“detrimental 45 percent.” Cramer concludes: “North Dakota’s electricity
producers provide some of the most affordable electricity and maintain
some of the cleanest air, but this Admiration’s focus on implementing a
radical environmental agenda threatens our economic future.”

Now, we wait for the CPP to make its way through the courts — first the
D.C. Circuit Court and then, in 2017, the Supreme Court. But, since the
CPP is on hold until at least 2017, its future will really be decided by
the next president. Milbank states: “the next administration could seek
to alter, cease or continue efforts to implement the existing CPP.
Should a Republican reach the Oval Office, this could result in a
permanent halt of the EPA’s implementation of the plan altogether, or a
significant departure from current emission reduction targets. Yet,
should a Democrat be elected, the new administration could push forward
with the CPP while exploring additional provisions of the Clean Air
Act.”

Of course, as things stand now, the next president will be appointing
Justice Scalia’s replacement. “If a Republican wins the White House, the
Atlantic observes, “their nominee would almost certainly join the
Supreme Court’s conservative wing. That justice would be unlikely to
vote to support the Clean Power Plan — but it wouldn’t matter, because
no remaining Republican supports Obama’s climate policies, anyway, so
they’d likely be reversed administratively.”

With a Republican president, there’ll be other changes that could impact
the CPP. The EPA, should it not be eliminated, will have a new
Administrator. Gina McCarthy will no longer be in charge and influencing
policy. If the CPP were actually argued before the court, it would be
under the guidance of new leadership and could be presented in a very
different way.

Since the CPP will not be argued in the Supreme Court until 2017, when
the next president will be in office, it really is the winner on
November 8, 2016, who determines the legal battle of the CPP — which
will either embrace or eradicate Obama’s climate change policies and the
Paris Agreement. Considering the CPP will, as Morrisey pleads, cause
“even more destruction of untold number of jobs, skyrocketing
electricity bills and the weakening of the nation’s electric grid,” the
stakes couldn’t be higher.

The laughable idea that renewable energy is or ever will be 'least cost'

The Utilities Commission has approved Duke's plan for converting one of
its coal plants to natural gas. Duke will build two combined cycle
turbines with an option to seek a third (the commission rejected the
third but left the option open). Capacity at the plant will go from 376
megawatts to 560 megawatts.

Environmental activists are peeved, apparently. A Sierra Club
representative quoted in the Asheville Citizen-Times was not only upset,
she was spouting demonstrable nonsense:

Emma Greenbaum, North Carolina organizing
representative for Sierra Club, said she is pleased the commission
turned down the third turbine but "disheartened that the approved plan
allows for this oversized natural gas project to go forward.

"It is unfortunate that we're being forced to
continue on a climate-polluting path when energy efficiency and
renewables continue to be the best, least cost solution for consumers
and the environment. We will continue to advocate for the expansion of
clean energy in our region and across the state as a transition to clean
energy is the only responsible long-term solution to our energy needs,"
she said.

No, really: "the best, least cost solution for consumers and the
environment." Let's examine that further, because renewable energy
sources are not even close to being cost-competitive, let alone "least
cost."

Cost-competitiveness is the hallowed deception of the renewables
industry. They are very dedicated to inducing people into somehow
thinking renewables are actually cheaper for consumers. But that is
absolute rubbish.

Throwing "energy efficiency" into the equation is one way they try it.
As economists at the Beacon Hill Institute showed in their peer review
of the renewable energy lobby's report purporting to show great gains
from the renewable energy portfolio standards,

Hidden in the text, tables, and charts is that there
is little to be said for the renewable energy subsidies themselves. The
cost savings will be the result of "energy efficiency," not renewable
energy. Everything else is trivial. But by giving the impression that
"not using energy" counts towards "renewable energy," they claim
renewable energy is cheaper.

Think of it this way. It's like a marshmallow-laden high-sugar kids'
cereal advertising itself as part of a healthy breakfast. Which means if
you eat a little with a healthy breakfast, it would be part of it. But
by itself it's rather unhealthy.

Renewable energy is part of lower energy costs when you have a little
with, well, not using energy at all. By itself, however ...

Well, let's consider:

It's not least-cost now.

When you're not looking, the same renewable energy lobby telling
politicians and ratepayers that your electricity bill is "Better off
with REPS" urges the Utilities Commission not to allow lower rates
because lower rates would be bad for renewable energy sources.

It certainly can't be least-cost if you shutter working coal plants to start up replacement renewable plants.

As it is, electricity generation from new plants is more expensive than
electricity from existing plants; that'll be worse when you replace an
existing plant generating electricity from an efficient source like coal
with ones relying on vastly inefficient sources.

It's definitely not least cost when you fully account for the realities of nondispatchable renewable energy.

Those would include their well-known inefficiencies and flat-out
inability to work when either the sun isn't shining enough or the wind
isn't blowing. Nature, economics, simple math, and physics all
work against nondispatchable renewable energy sources with respect to
whether they can ever be cost-competitive with traditional sources.

Showering renewable sources with far more federal subsidies than other energy sources get hasn't helped, either.

It can't even be cost-competitive in the near future, let alone least-cost.

Renewable energy sure hasn't become cost-competitive despite four
decades' worth of promising it'll be cost-competitive in the near
future. Six years ago the Institute for Energy Research felt prompted to
ask "Will renewables become cost-competitive anytime soon?" and found
the "almost there" keep-subsidies-flowing rhetoric going back to the
1970s.

Meanwhile, new MIT research is advocating an adjustable carbon tax to
deal with the inescapable reality that renewables will never be
cost-competitive with traditional energy sources on their own. They want
cost-competitive renewable energy so badly they are willing to
artificially spike traditional energy prices to cause that to happen by
default (take that, poor ratepayers!).

This approach to competition is like Commodus secretly stabbing Maximus
in the back before they fought, thinking that was the only way he might
win their duel.

Furthermore, as Daily Caller reports,

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
is currently investigating how green energy undermines the reliability
of the electrical grid. FERC believe there is a "significant risk" of
electricity in the United States becoming unreliable because "wind and
solar don't offer the services the shuttered coal plants provided."
Environmental regulations could make operating coal or natural gas power
plant unprofitable, which could compromise the reliability of the
entire power grid.

It is far from least-cost even when you try to factor in the environment.

A Brookings Institute study tried to incorporate the "social cost" of
carbon dioxide emissions along with nondispatchable renewable energy
sources' need for backup baseload generation and levelized costs. The
study found that "solar power is by far the most expensive way of
reducing carbon emissions" and that "Wind is the next most expensive."

Attendees of the joint John Locke Foundation and NC WARN energy policy
forum will remember that the panelists all agreed (see the end) that
trying to generate a "social cost" measure of carbon dioxide emissions
was futile.

Not to mention, trying to account for all social costs would require
having to account for the many ecological impacts of the highly
land-intensive facilities as well, and the hazardous materials they
require.

This is just modelling nonsense. Amusing that they found an
effect in the 1930s, though. The usual Warmist story is that the
human effect did not start until the LATE C20. But that
discrepancy will be dismissed with an armwave, no doubt

The last 16 record-breaking hot years globally clearly show the
influence of human caused climate change with the first signs appearing
as far back as the 1930s, according to new Australian research released
today.

“Globally all the record-breaking hot years we’ve had since the 1990s
are so much outside natural variability that they would be almost
impossible without climate change caused by humans,” said Dr Andrew
King, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

But even at country and regional scales, where it is often much harder
to detect global warming signals, the influence of human caused climate
change still became unmistakable in many regions in the 1990s and for
Australia as far back as 1980.

“In Australia our research showed the last six record-breaking hot years
and last three record-breaking hot summers were made much more likely
due to global warming,” said lead author, Dr King.

“We were able to see climate change more clearly in Australia because of
its position in the Southern Hemisphere in the middle of the ocean, far
away from the cooling influence of high concentrations of industrial
aerosols.”

Previous research has shown that aerosols in high concentrations over
specific regions had a cooling effect, reflecting more heat back into
space. However, when those aerosols were removed from the atmosphere,
the warming returned rapidly.

This cooling impact was seen very clearly by the researchers when they
looked at five different regions, Central England, Central Europe,
Central US, East Asia and Australia.

Cooling periods, likely caused by aerosols, occurred in Central England,
Central US, Central Europe and East Asia during the 1960s and 1970s
before accelerated warming returned. These heightened aerosol
concentrations also delayed the emergence of a clear human caused
climate change signal in all regions studied except Australia.

“In regards to a regional human caused climate change signal, Australia
was the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world. The signal
appeared there first and then over the coming years it became apparent
elsewhere,” Dr King said.

“Recent increases in aerosols over East Asia has started to slow the
rise in the number of the region’s record hot years and summers, again
masking the clear climate change signal we are finding in other areas.

“High aerosol concentrations also significantly delayed the climate signal in the Central US.”

To get their results the researchers took a new approach. In the past,
most researchers searching for a human caused climate change signal
selected specific events and then tried to determine the role of climate
change in those events.

By contrast, this study looked at when events started exceeding the
range of natural variability. Using climate models, they looked at a
world without human produced greenhouse gases and compared it to a world
where the composition of the atmosphere corresponded with those found
over time in the real world.

Where real world observations rose above the range of natural
variability produced in climate models showing temperatures in a world
without industrial activity, this indicated the unequivocal influence of
human caused global warming.

“Everywhere we look the climate change signal for extreme heat events is
becoming stronger. The key now is to determine how much warmer the
climate will continue to get, so we can respond to the impacts this will
inevitably bring,” said Dr King.

“This is particularly true for Australia, which appears to have one of
the strongest climate change signals for a populated country. As a
nation, it will need to respond more quickly and understand clearly what
future climate change brings.”

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

8 March, 2016

NASA study shows worst drought in 900 years may be behind Middle East upheaval

This is actually a rather old story but this time we are relying on
dendrochronology. Amusing that tree rings in other Warmist studies
are said to represent temperature but below are said to represent water
shortage. Versatile! I wonder which button you push to get the
two different readings? Obviously, what you make of them is very much
open to interpretation -- and we can expect only one interpretation from
Warmists: Doom!

But even if we take the study seriously, it's
just guesswork that attributes the severity of the drought to global
warming. The Saharah was once lush but went into drought.
Was that because of all those ancient Egyptians running around in SUVs
when they weren't building pyramids? Climates certainly change but
nobody so far has been able to predict it

And right in the
middle of it is Israel, which has NO water shortages these days.
Clearly politics is the crucial difference in providing water to
farmers. Has Israel seized everybody else's water? No. Only
Israel desalinates

I am actually rather peeved at the moment over
the cooling that has gone on in my neck of the woods. In January, I
normally have a 17 metre long solid expanse of blossom from my eight
Crepe Myrtle trees. But they missed out entirely this year.
No blossom. They are temperature sensitive. They need solid high
temperatures for weeks to bloom. And we just did not have that
this year. So does that indicate global cooling? No.
Any more than drought in the Middle East indicates warming. It
just indicates unpredictable natural variability

And drought
usually goes with cooling, not warming. Warm oceans give off more
water vapour which brings rain. So are we saying that the Middle
East has been really cool in recent years? Could be

And are we allowed to mention that it's actually ISIS causing all the trouble over there -- and not global warming?

THE incredibly complex chaos of Islamic State and the upheavals of Syria
and Iraq may have a very simple cause: The region’s worst drought in
900 years.

A NASA study published in the Journal of Geophysical
Research-Atmospheres shows the Middle East is in the grip of a
mega-drought that began in 1998. It has taken hold in Cyprus, Israel,
Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey.

The water shortage has been taking a steadily increasing toll on farmers
and the region’s ecology, with crop failures, dust storms and
record-breaking heat now an annual event.

But the true extent of the drought is only now becoming clear.

“The range of how extreme wet or dry periods were is quite broad, but
the recent drought in the Levant region stands out as about 50 per cent
drier than the driest period in the past 500 years, and 10 to 20 per
cent drier than the worst drought of the past 900 years,” a NASA
statement reads.

NASA climate scientists have been mapping a database of the
Mediterranean and Middle East’s tree rings — the pattern in which a
plant’s new growth is laid upon itself each season — spanning several
thousand years.

Tree rings are a kind of ecological fingerprint. Each band reveals
how much water the tree has been taking in, and how optimal conditions
were for growth. When a tree goes through a period of drought, the
bands get thinner. The more thin bands, the longer the drought.

Mapping when — and where — these trees were suffering water starvation
offers an opportunity to understand the natural variation in the areas
weather.

“If we look at recent events and we start to see anomalies that are
outside this range of natural variability, then we can say with some
confidence that it looks like this particular event or this series of
events had some kind of human caused climate change contribution,” says
lead author of the study Ben Cook.

In the case of the Middle East, a wide-reaching drought spanning more than 15 years has not been seen for more than 900 years.

Historical documents dating from 1100AD were used to corroborate the accuracy of the tree-ring map.

The flood of refugees out of the Middle East and into Europe is a natural consequence of the conditions, the study infers.

Historically, when there is drought in the Eastern Mediterranean, there
is no escape to the west. Both ends tend to suffer at the same time.
Which generates cause for conflict.

“It’s not necessarily possible to rely on finding better climate
conditions in one region than another, so you have the potential for
large-scale disruption of food systems as well as potential conflict
over water resources,” says co-author Kevin Anchukaitis.

But the patterns established over thousands of years do suggest refuge: To the north.

When eastern North Africa is dry, Greece, Italy, France and Spain tend to be wet. And vice-versa.

From these patterns, the NASA scientists were able to identify the
engines behind the Middle East’s weather: The North Atlantic Oscillation
and the East Atlantic Pattern.

These regular wind patterns over the Atlantic are themselves driven by
oceanic currents and temperatures. Periodically they push rainstorms
away from the Mediterranean, instead causing long dry winds to circulate
in their place.

The NASA research shows that this time, however, the drought is
different. Its behaviour does not match the patterns clearly established
over the past thousand of years.

“The Mediterranean is one of the areas that is unanimously projected as
going to dry in the future [due to man-made climate change],” climate
scientist Yochanan Kushnir states in the NASA release.

Climate change, weather, and agricultural cycles all played their part
in religious history. On occasion, disasters drove paranoia and
persecution – see my columns on the years around 1680. My discussion of
the c.1740 era suggested how a deep crisis might create an audience open
to revivalism. No less fundamentally, catastrophe could decide
something as basic as the world’s religious map, of where different
faiths found their main centers of strength.

In my Lost History of Christianity, I wrote about the dreadful years of
anti-Christian and anti-Jewish persecutions around 1320. To
over-simplify a lengthy story, that coincided with a massive change in
climate and the onset of the Little Ice Age. Populations had swelled
during the warming period between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.
Europe’s population more than doubled during these prosperous times,
forcing settlers to swarm onto marginal lands. In the late thirteenth
century, however, Europe and the Middle East entered what has been
described as the Little Ice Age, as pack ice grew in the oceans, and
trade routes became more difficult both by land and by sea. Summers
became cooler and wetter, and as harvests deteriorated, people starved.
Some accounts date the crisis to a full decade, roughly 1315-25.

As another author wrote, the weather went all medieval.

Just how bad was that era? Finnish historian Timo Myllyntaus writes that

In north-central Europe and the British Isles torrential rains and
floods caused a famine between 1315 and 1322 that turned out to be the
severest of the medieval period. Historians regard this Great Famine as
one the most catastrophic subsistence crises ever to strike northern
Europe. For centuries afterward it haunted the minds of Europeans, who
recalled tales of widespread starvation, violent social conflicts, tax
revolts, ruthless crimes, epidemic diseases, and terribly high
mortality.

In 1306 and 1323, the Baltic Sea was completely ice-bound.

I have already referred to a recent atlas mapping drought in European
history. This offers a superb visual of the year 1315, with most of
Europe overwhelmed by heavy rains that made farming all but impossible.
Only the tip of Italy escaped.

One good book on this era is William Rosen’s The Third Horseman: Climate
Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century (2014). As a reviewer
summarizes his conclusions:

With the rains, not only were crops ruined, but wood was too wet to use
for fuel, which in turn made producing salt almost impossible. Salt was
the period’s food preservative. Without it, every commodity that
depended on salt was in turn ruined: salted herring and cod, and cheese.
In addition to the rains, the weather change brought colder, longer
winters, which froze the waters. The frozen oceans demolished the
fishing trade. It also made wool production plummet, decimating the wool
and textile trade on which much of the English and northern European
economy depended. Animal epidemics added to the suffering, killing off
most of the animals used for plowing, meat, milk and wool.

The world could no longer sustain the population it had gained during
the boom years. Europe suffered its horrific Great Famine between 1315
and 1317, with reports of widespread cannibalism in 1318–20. Here is a
contemporary English account from Johannes de Trakelowe:

The dearth began in the month of May and lasted until the feast of the
nativity of the Virgin [September 8]. The summer rains were so heavy
that grain could not ripen. It could hardly be gathered and used to bake
bread down to the said feast day unless it was first put in vessels to
dry. Around the end of autumn the dearth was mitigated in part, but
toward Christmas it became as bad as before. Bread did not have its
usual nourishing power and strength because the grain was not nourished
by the warmth of summer sunshine. Hence those who ate it, even in large
quantities, were hungry again after a little while. There can be no
doubt that the poor wasted away when even the rich were constantly
hungry…. Four pennies worth of coarse bread was not enough to feed a
common man for one day. The usual kinds of meat, suitable for eating,
were too scarce; horse meat was precious; plump dogs were stolen. And,
according to many reports, men and women in many places secretly ate
their own children….

Populations contracted sharply across Eurasia. Weakened populations were
exposed to epidemic diseases, and the coming of the Black Death in the
1340s proved the coup de grace.

Those changes rewrote the history of religions, as terrified societies
sought scapegoats, and launched persecutions on a scarcely precedented
scale.

Around 1320, Middle Eastern Christians suffered a general cataclysm.
Muslims targeted Christians who had long enjoyed broad tolerance. In
Egypt, many Coptic churches and monasteries were destroyed, with 1321 a
notoriously violent year. Meanwhile, the once-powerful Christians of
Iraq/Mesopotamia were subject to brutal pogroms, and forced conversions
became commonplace.

Throughout these conflicts, violence was repeatedly driven by paranoia,
by suspicion of plots launched by minorities against the mainstream
society. In the Middle East, that meant labeling and demonizing
Christians. At one point in Egypt, Christians were blamed for setting
fires across Cairo, allegedly aided by Byzantine monks armed with
ingenious incendiary bombs. When some of the accused confessed under
torture, the authorities were forced to support the popular movement. At
one point, the sultan faced a mob some twenty thousand strong, all
calling for the suppression of Christians and the destruction of
chucrhes.

By midcentury, Muslim writers had access to a whole catalog of
anti-Christian charges that bear close resemblance to scabrous anti-
Jewish tracts like the later Protocols of the Elders of Zion. According
to writers like al-Asnawi, Christians were spies ever on the lookout for
opportunities to betray the Muslim cause; and cases in both Egypt and
Syria proved they were serial arsonists. Given modern-day stereotypes of
Islam in the West, it is ironic that Christian minorities were so
feared because they were allegedly plotting terror bombings against
prestigious symbols of Muslim power.

The Christian world too now became massively less tolerant, and acquired
a lengthy list of demonic enemies plotting against its survival. This
was indeed the era in which the great European witch persecutions began.
The papacy formally listed witchcraft as a heresy—that is, as an evil
alternative religion—in 1320, and women were soon being accused of the
familiar package of crimes, including devil worship, poisoning, and
black magic. The Irish case of Dame Alice Kyteler was one of the first
of the classic witch trials. In 1320–21, southern France and Aragon
suffered two outbreaks of hysterical violence, the Shepherds’ Crusade
and the Lepers’ Plot. The world was changing, and definitely for the
worse.

The main European victims were the Jews, who were regularly blamed for
disasters of all kinds, and especially for epidemics. Pogroms and
massacres surged from the 1320s. The Shepherds’ Crusade was mainly
directed against Jews, and it was at this time that we hear charges of
Jews and lepers conspiring to poison wells. In 1321, the King of Castile
forced Jews to wear a yellow badge, and the following year the King of
France ordered Jews expelled from his realm. That order was not revoked
until 1359. Attacks reached new heights during the Black Death. Across
Western Europe, Jewish communities were uprooted and destroyed, leading
to mass migrations to the East, to lands then controlled by Poland and
Lithuania.

All this, by the way, is over and above the purely secular revolts and
disasters that raged in these years, such as the extensive baronial
revolts against Edward II in England in 1321-22. In 1321 similarly, a
civil war erupted in the Byzantine Empire.

The result of the climate-driven catastrophe was the religious world
that we know in more recent times. Christians were reduced to the status
of a small minority in the Islamic world, while Europe’s Jews mainly
concentrated in the eastern parts of the continent – where they remained
until the new massacres of the Holocaust. And Europe’s witch-panic
endured for four more centuries.

Dr Fowler is quite wrong. He would only have to think 5 minutes
to see that global warming will NOT bring food shortages. Let me say it
all again:

Greenies have been making false prophecies of food
shortages for years now. Even Hitler did it. And I have often
rebutted them. In brief: The world's internationally-traded food problem
has for a long time been glut; Warming would open up new
agricultural land in Canada and Russia; Warming should cause more
evaporation from the oceans, thus giving MORE rainfall, not less. A
prediction of flood might make some sense but a prediction of water
shortage makes no sense at all

The modelling crap below is a
laugh a minute. If global warming DID exist, it would be INCREASING
food-crop yields. Plants gobble up CO2. It is their basic food. And a
warmer world would be a wetter one -- again giving plants a boost. The
increased level of CO2 now in the atmosphere has already benefited plant
growth, with the greening of the Sahel the most vivid example of that

Aside
from Greenie folly and basic biology, however, there is China. China
was a food-importer under Mao and any Greenie wisehead would see that as
inevitable given that an area about the same as the contiguous United
States has to feed 1.3 billion people with primitive technology. Poop is
their main fertilizer.

But under capitalism China feeds the
world. It is a huge exporter of food and exports to most countries on
the globe. For instance: "By value, China is the world's No.1 exporter
of fruits and vegetables, and a major exporter of other food products
ranging from apple juice to garlic and sausage casings. Its agricultural
exports to the US surged to $US2.26 billion last year". And that quote
was from 2007!

And have another look at Russia. How many
people know how big Siberia is? It is roughly 5 milllion sq.
miles, compared to about 3 milion sq. miles for the continental
USA. It's BIG. So if warming opened up Southern Siberia to
agriculture, the potential for new food production would be enormous.

Politics
and economics are the main constraints on the food supply, nothing
else. Capitalism is its friend. Greenies are its enemy

More investment is needed to develop climate change resistant varieties
of crops to prevent paying the ‘ugly’ price of food shortages, an expert
has warned.

Rising temperatures are set to hit key crops, damaging food supplies and
sparking national security and geopolitical threats, according to Dr
Cary Fowler, former head of the Crop Trust and member of the board
advising US government aid agency USAID on agriculture.

Investing in developing varieties of crops that are resistant to
drought, floods or high temperatures, were ‘low-cost investments with a
big pay-off’, he suggested.

But a failure to do so could prompt starvation, malnutrition and war or unrest.

Dr Fowler was speaking as the Crop Trust’s ‘doomsday’ Global Seed Vault
in Svalbard, Norway, which provides a back-up for gene banks of seeds in
countries around the world, received more key varieties of crops
including sunflower, squash, tomato, watermelon, carrot and barley.

He said it was important to preserve the diversity of crops grown
worldwide, many of which were being lost as farmers moved on to new
varieties, but which could have traits to help develop more resistant
types of grains, seeds, fruit and vegetables.

An example, he said, was yams, which tens of millions of people relied
on for food across sub-Saharan African countries that face temperatures
well above historic growing conditions. But there are just six plant
breeders working on new varieties of yams.

‘We need to make more investment in these types of crops which have a big pay-off,’ he said.

‘If we don’t, we pay a very different price, a very ugly one, a high
one,’ he warned. ‘We know from a number of studies there is a high
correlation between growing seasons with abnormally high temperatures
and war and civil strife.’

Pointing to the Arab Spring, which began in the wake of drought and food
price spikes, he said: ‘We only have to look to that to see it’s not a
problem that’s just a food security, but a national security,
geopolitical, issue as well.’

The Debate Over Global Warming Is Just a Big Misunderstanding, Says Study. Or is it?

Ronald Bailey

A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 63 percent of
Americans think climate change is a serious problem—down from 69 percent
last June. Among Democrats, 80 percent thought global warming is a
serious problem, 65 percent wanted more federal government action to
stop it, and 57 percent believed most scientists agree on whether global
warming is happening. In contrast, 60 percent of Republicans said
climate change is not a serious problem, less than 25 percent wanted
more government action, and two-thirds thought there is "a lot of
disagreement among scientists" about the issue.

What accounts for this partisan divide? According to a new study by the
Princeton psychologist Sander van der Linden and his colleagues,
Republicans doubt man-made global warming largely because that they
don't know most climate scientists think it's a real and urgent problem.
Once conservatives, liberals, and moderates are informed that a
scientific consensus on climate change exists, the study concludes, they
lay down their debating points and come together in a climatic kumbaya
of political harmony and depolarization. The climate change political
fight is just one big misunderstanding that can be cleared up simply by
telling Americans what scientists think about the issue.

It would be good news indeed in these contentious times if simply
providing people with information about what scientists think would
dispel intense conflicts over public policy issues. But the study's data
don't do much to support the authors' bold claims.

The researchers conducted a survey of more than 6,000 Americans, who
were divided into two groups. One group was told that "97 percent of
climate scientists have concluded that human-caused global warming is
happening" and then asked about climate change issues; the other was not
given the 97 percent figure. That statistic was most likely drawn from a
2013 review of the scientific literature; the number is, to put it
mildly, somewhat controversial. In any case, the researchers report that
only 10 percent of Americans "correctly understand that the scientific
consensus ranges between 90 percent to 100 percent." Twenty-five percent
of liberals shared this understanding; just 5 percent of conservatives
did.

Van der Linden and company claim that their new study replicates
findings in a similar study they did in 2015. In that earlier paper,
they surveyed more than 1,000 Americans about their beliefs concerning
climate change and then told them about the 97 percent consensus among
scientists. Did that change their beliefs about climate change? Very
marginally.

Using a 100-point scale, they found that all respondents increased their
"belief certainty" about the occurrence of climate change from 73.08
points to 77.01 points after being told about the consensus.
Correspondingly, human causation belief certainty went from 63.98 to
68.02; worry rose from 62.84 to 67.32; and support for government action
increased from 75.19 to 76.88 points.

The researchers also claim that providing information about the
consensus resulted in greater belief certainty increases among
conservatives than among liberals. (Oddly, they do not provide the raw
survey data.) From these results, they concluded that "effectively
communicating the scientific consensus can also help move the issue of
climate change forward on the public policy agenda." Drawing this
conclusion from a one-shot survey that shifted the strength of opinions
about climate change by less than 5 percentage points seems a bit of a
stretch.

The new study is no stronger. Again they leave out the raw survey data.
But using a 7-point scale this time, they report that conservatives'
belief that global warming is happening measures 4.57 points. (Just for
comparison, moderates score 5.38 on that question and liberals 6.16.)
Once conservatives are informed about the scientific consensus, their
score increases to 4.81 points. Conservative support for government
action on climate change increases by .08 points after they're told
about the consensus.

The researchers also claim that they do not find any evidence for
conservative "belief polarization"—that is, a counter-reaction to claims
about the consensus that would lead them to believe less strongly in
man-made global warming. They do find that conservatives, even after
being told about the scientific consensus, still express lower
acceptance that global warming is caused by humanity, less worry about
it, and less support for government action than do similarly informed
moderates and liberals.

Overall, the authors espouse what they call the "gateway belief" model
of persuasion: If Americans are told that most scientists think man-made
climate change is happening, they will think so too. Not only that:
They will become more worried about it and start demanding government
action to stop it. And so the study essentially endorses more science
education as the way to resolve climate change rows.

These findings contradict previous research from the Yale Cultural
Cognition Project, which concluded that beliefs about politicized areas
of science are generally treated as cultural signals telling fellow
partisans that you are a good person who is on their side. According to
the Yale researchers, getting people to change their minds about a
politicized issue amounts to trying to persuade them to betray their
tribe. This dynamic makes them highly resistant to attempts to bombard
them with alleged widely agreed-upon facts. Contrariwise, the folks at
the Cognition Project find that the smarter a person is, the easier it
is for them to find "proof" for his or her beliefs.

Do the results reported by van der Linden and his team show the way to a
political consensus on climate change? Not hardly, says the Cognition
Project researcher Dan Kahan. In fact, recent polling data from the
Cognition Project and the Annenberg Public Policy Center aimed at
measuring "ordinary science intelligence" show that as the science
comprehension of both Republicans and Democrats goes up, they become
more, not less, polarized on climate change. (See below.)

In addition, as the science comprehension of both conservatives and
liberals increases, so does the perception by both that there is
scientific consensus on climate change. But scientifically literate
conservatives don't believe that the consensus is right.

"As relatively 'right-leaning' individuals become progressively more
proficient in making sense of scientific information," Kahan reports,
"they become simultaneously more likely to believe there is 'scientific
consensus' on human-caused climate change but less likely to 'believe'
in it themselves!" He adds, "One thing that is clear from these data is
that it's ridiculous to claim that 'unfamiliarity' with scientific
consensus on climate change 'causes' non-acceptance of human-caused
global warming."

The slim statistics supplied by van der Linden and his team don't change
that much. Constantly hammering on the message that there is a
consensus among climate scientists does not seem to be a fruitful route
toward depoliticizing the issue.

The House took a stand Thursday against an Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) rule that threatens the survival of the small companies
that make up the bulk of the American brick industry. The EPA's Brick
Maximum Achievable Control Technology (Brick MACT) rule will require
brick plants to install costly new emission reduction equipment, after
first tearing out the expensive equipment they installed to comply with a
previous, less stringent version of the rule. The new equipment will
cost about $2.2 million per kiln, yet will eliminate only a negligible
amount of mercury emissions per year, far less than is in the teeth of
the American population.

The bill passed by the House Thursday, H.R. 4557, the Blocking
Regulatory Interference from Closing Kilns (BRICK) Act, would delay
enforcement of the onerous new EPA regulation until the courts can
resolve legal challenges to the rule. That seems like common sense—don't
force Americans to comply with a rule before it's determined to be
lawful—yet 163 members of the House (all Democrats) voted against the
bill.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI-1) praised passage of the bill, noting
that “The brick industry is the latest target of the Obama
administration’s regulatory assault on American manufacturing. The EPA’s
burdensome emission standards are another breach of executive power
that may well be struck down by the courts, but not before jobs are lost
and the industry suffers."

Jobs have already been lost, as the American brick industry was reduced
from 209 plants to 131 plants during the last twenty years, due to the
costly regulations already imposed on it by the federal bureaucracy. The
new rule further threatens the survival of many of the small brick
companies that still exist along with the livelihood of their workers.
As the president of a small Ohio brick company testified to Congress
last week, "Many of our employees have never graduated from high school
and would have great difficulty finding similar employment without
significant additional training."

Obama and allies double down on biofuels and climate, and against carbon-based fuels

Paul Driessen

Separating reality from ideology and political agendas is difficult, but
essential, if we are to revitalize our economy and help the world’s
poorest families take their rightful places among Earth’s prosperous
people. Energy reality is certainly in our favor. But ideological forces
are powerful and persistent.

Right now, 82% of all US energy and 87% of world energy comes from oil,
natural gas and coal. Less than 3% is non-hydroelectric renewable energy
– and globally half of that is traditional biomass: wood, grass and
animal dung that cause millions of respiratory infections and deaths
every year. Thankfully, the transition to fossil fuels and electricity
continues apace, replacing biomass and lifting billions out of abject
poverty, with wind and solar meeting basic needs in remote areas until
electricity grids arrive.

In the USA, hydraulic fracturing has taken petroleum production to its
highest level since 1972, and oil imports to their lowest level since
1995. America now exports crude oil, natural gas and refined products.

The fracking genie cannot be put back in the bottle. In fact, it is
being adopted all over the world, opening new shale oil and gas fields,
prolonging the life of conventional fields, leaving less energy in the
ground, and giving the world another century or more of abundant,
reliable, affordable petroleum. That’s plenty of time to develop new
energy technologies that actually work without mandates and enormous
subsidies.

So much for the “peak oil” scare. Indeed, in some ways, the world’s current problem is too much oil.

In the face of this global abundance and tepid American, European,
Chinese and world economies, Saudi Arabia has increased its oil
production, to maintain market share and try to drive more US oil
companies out of business. Oil prices have plummeted from $136 per
barrel in 2008 to less than $35 or even $30 today. Natural gas has gone
from $13.50 per million Btu in 2009 to $3 or less today.

Those low prices are saving families billions of dollars a year, and
spurring investments in new US petrochemical and other manufacturing
facilities. However, they have also cost thousands of oil patch jobs,
left many energy companies near bankruptcy, and sent shockwaves through
states and countries that depend on energy production and revenues for
their tax base, government programs and public assistance. Prices will
eventually rise again, but nowhere close to those record highs.

Amid this turmoil, as if to ensure more petroleum industry bankruptcies,
President Obama wants to slap a $10.25 tax on every barrel of produced
oil, and use the revenues to bolster his climate change and renewable
energy agenda. Under her presidency, says Hillary Clinton, a ban on oil,
gas and coal production from federal lands would be a “done deal” and
the United States would have “at least 50% clean or carbon-free energy
by 2050.”

Such policies would kill millions of jobs, torpedo the manufacturing
renaissance, eliminate the assumed revenues by strangling the oil
production that generates them, impact croplands and wildlife habitats,
and prolong America’s economic doldrums. They would hammer poor,
minority and blue-collar families, which spend much higher portions of
their budgets on energy than do wealthy households.

As a new Massachusetts Institute of Technology study explains, without
government mandates and massive taxpayer subsidies, “green” energy
simply cannot compete with conventional fuels and power plants. Wind,
solar and biofuel “alternatives” work only when traditional energy
prices are extremely high – which in the absence of a major Middle East
or global war is not likely to happen for some time.

Similarly, a brand-new University of Chicago study found that oil prices
would have to top $350 a barrel before Tesla and other electric cars
become cheaper to operate than gasoline-powered vehicles! That’s because
battery and charging costs are $325 per kilowatt-hour for plug-in
models. No wonder Americans bought only 116,099 electric cars in 2015 –
out of a record 17,500,000 cars and light trucks sold – despite huge
rebates, free charging stations and single-occupant access to express
lanes for electric cars.

Nevertheless, renewable energy mandates have a lot going for them. They
reward political cronies. They put unelected, unaccountable activists
and bureaucrats in charge of our energy decisions and living standards.
They redistribute wealth: from taxpayers to politicians, bureaucrats,
lobbyists, wealthy investors, and workers and senior management in lucky
greenback green industries and corporations.

By virtue of their wealth, political power, or employment by government
agencies that operate under different rules than those they enforce on
citizens and businesses, these chosen few are also shielded from the
consequences of policies and decisions they impose on the rest of us.

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Tom Steyer, Bill Gates, Leonardo
DiCaprio, Elon Musk, EPA and DOE officials, and climate researchers who
receive millions in taxpayer funding insist that manmade global warming
threatens the world, and renewable energy is the solution. But for them
to lecture us and dictate our livelihoods and living standards – while
enjoying their mansions, yachts, limousines and jet-setter lifestyles –
strikes many as hypocritical and intolerable.

Moreover, less developed countries signed the Paris treaty to get
trillions of dollars in climate change “adaptation” and “compensation”
funds; they have no intention of curbing their economic growth, fossil
fuel use or CO2 emissions anytime soon. Non-elite Americans’ energy and
economic sacrifices will thus bring no global benefits. It is also true
that a then healthier oil industry generated the only economic and
employment bright spots that (in conjunction with lies about Benghazi)
got President Obama reelected.

But none of this is preventing the president from launching a final
regulatory assault, to carve his policy agenda in stone, reward his
allies, and pummel states and companies on his “enemies of nature” list.
Nor does it prevent him from telling Africans to develop only to the
extent enabled by “sustainable” wind, solar and biofuel energy because,
if each of you “has got a car and a big house, the planet will boil
over.”

While bridges and defense languish, he dedicates billions of dollars in
his last budget for “clean” energy research, such as E. coli bacteria
for next-generation biofuels; billions for climate cataclysm studies;
and $2 billion for “vulnerable” Alaskan and Lower 48 communities
“threatened” by oceans that are rising at barely seven inches per
century. (He ignores the fact that Arctic warming and cooling cycles go
back centuries, and scientists still cannot differentiate between
natural and human factors in climate change.)

Mr. Obama wants his BLM, EPA, USFS, USFWS, BOEM, OSHA and other
alphabet-soup agencies to implement dozens of costly but environmentally
meaningless rules on energy production from federal lands. That will
further cripple western state economies, just as his administration did
to West Virginia.

Meanwhile, in another rubberstamp of heavy-handed government actions,
the post-Scalia Supreme Court just ruled that EPA may continue forcing
states and utility companies to spend billions of dollars trying to
comply with coal-fired power plant rules, while lower courts spend years
reviewing challenges to them.

And still erudite “experts” ponder why the US economy is stagnant.
Here’s part of the answer: Crushing tax rates and an impenetrable Tax
Code. Regulations that cost companies and families nearly $2 trillion a
year. Bureaucrats who impose costly agendas with no accountability for
blatant incompetence, outright fraud or intentional harm. Too many
programs that reward people for not working, not looking for work, not
finishing school, and having children they can’t care for with guys who
can’t bother to be fathers.

The 2016 election year stakes are huge. Candidates need to end the
insults, and start focusing on issues that matter, amid Mr. Obama’s
ongoing efforts to “fundamentally transform” the United States. Voters
need to ask tough questions – and demand to know exactly how candidates
intend to “make America great again,” control the federal behemoth and
pay for all these “essential” government programs.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

7 March, 2016

A late night thought

I am close to ROFL (Rolling on the floor laughing) about the revision of his RSS satellite temperature record by Carl Mears.

His revised figures show a temperature rise of one hundredths of one
degree Celsius per annum. A straight-line projection of that
(Warmists are big on straight-line projections) produces a 2115
temperature rise of only one degree Celsius. Until the Greenies
started shrieking, nobody noticed the nearly one degree rise between the
late 19th century and the late 20C so why should we expect our
great-grandchildren to be bothered by a similar rise? I am sure
that they don't need our concern!

The third attempt to erase the global warming "hiatus"

The fact that the global temperature record was showing a "hiatus"
(was not showing any rise) was first pointed out some years ago by the
late Bob Carter. Scorn and contempt was heaped on him for his
pains. Warmists said it was just a "blip". Not unreasonably,
they pointed to previous hiatuses -- such as the long hiatus of 1945 to
1975 (30 years!) -- and noted that temperature rises re-started after
that.

A 30 year temperature hiatus while CO2 levels were rising
strongly did not seem to embarrass them, despite it being totally
contrary to their theory. They just explained it away as due to
"special" factors.

But as the current hiatus got longer and
skeptics got increasingly irritating about it, they had to do
something. And in the best Green/Left tradition, their first
response was to lie. They started to declare that various years
were warmest, warmer etc. We got such declarations annually.
The fact of the matter is that the fluctuations in the 21st century
were tiny, differences in hundredths of one degree only -- so were
statistically non-significant and hence non-existent from a scientific
point of view. But who cares about science when an ideology is at
risk?

Riding differences so tiny must have got irritating
however, at least to the scientists among Warmists. They knew
about statistical significance so ignoring it was undoubtedly
embarrassing.

Then Tom Karl of NOAA rode to the rescue. He
made large "corrections" to the ocean temperature record and thus erased
the hiatus. That attracted such a lot of criticism, including
Congressional criticism, that even the Warmist establishment in the Fyfe paper
eventually disowned it and reaffirmed that there was a 21st century
temperature slowdown, which they again explained as due to "special"
factors.

The next attack on the hiatus was by crowing about
the unusually large temperature rise in 2015. It actually
amounted to 13 hundredths of one degree. Exciting! That it was
just the expected effect of the El Nino weather phenomenon was
pooh-poohed. But it was ENTIRELY due to El Nino and other natural
causes because CO2 levels did not rise in 2015

All the fun so far
had been with the surface temperature record, always a slender reed to
lean on. In the background was the pesky satellite record showing
no warming trend at all.

There has been a slight reprieve from
that glowering satellite record recently in that it now shows some rise
in early 2016. El Nino has not run its course yet, however, so
there is no reason to think that that rise is anything but an El Nino
effect. Additionally, El Nino should be followed by La Nina, which
brings cooling, so the record for 2016 is likely to rejoin the hiatus.
So the Warmists know they can't crow too loudly.

So we come to
the latest erasure attempt: by Carl Mears, proprietor of RSS, one of the
satellite records. As he himself admits, he has been mightily
irritated by people accusing his temperature record of supporting the
climate skeptics. He has in fact been expressing irritation with
that for quite some years. He has declared several times that he
still supports Warmism despite what his own data show.

So he has
finally devised a solution to his embarrassment. He has "adjusted"
his data. He said his old data had errors in it and he has now
corrected the errors, to show some warming -- a warming of 18
hundredths of one degree over nearly 20 years, no less! One
hundredth of a degree per annum! If there had been errors in it, one
wonders why he rode with the "erroneous" data for so long but let that
be by the by.

And the explanation he gives for his adjustments is
reasonable in principle, but, as always, the devil is in the
details. And the details do contain devilry, as Roy Spencer
has pointed out. Carl's adjustments were so bad in fact that the
paper in which he described them was rejected as unpublishable by a
major climate journal, eventually being accepted by a meteorological
one.

So Warmists seem to be back where they were when they first
heaped contumely on Bob Carter, saying that the hiatus is just a blip
due to "special" factors and warming should resume "real soon
now". That is faith, however, not science. Geologically, we
are at the end of a warming period so cooling is in fact somewhat more
likely. But nobody knows and nobody can know.

The fourth
word in Seth Borenstein's article below amuses me: "may". Even
faithful old Seth clearly had his doubts about how strong Carl's
arguments are

Climate change doubters may have lost one of their key talking points: a
particular satellite temperature dataset that had seemed to show no
warming for the past 18 years.

The Remote Sensing System temperature data, promoted by many who reject
mainstream climate science and especially most recently by Sen. Ted
Cruz, now shows a slight warming of about 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit since
1998. Ground temperature measurements, which many scientists call more
accurate, all show warming in the past 18 years.

"There are people that like to claim there was no warming; they really
can't claim that anymore," said Carl Mears, the scientist who runs the
Remote Sensing System temperature data tracking.

The change resulted from an adjustment Mears made to fix a nagging discrepancy in the data from 15 satellites.

The satellites are in a polar orbit, so they are supposed to go over the
same place at about the same time as they circle from north to south
pole. Some of the satellites drift a bit, which changes their afternoon
and evening measurements ever so slightly. Some satellites had drift
that made temperatures warmer, others cooler. Three satellites had
thrusters and they stayed in the proper orbit so they provided guidance
for adjustments.

Mears said he was "motivated by fixing these differences between the
satellites. If the differences hadn't been there, I wouldn't have done
the upgrade."

NASA chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt and Andrew Dessler, a climate
scientist at Texas A&M, said experts and studies had shown these
problems that Mears adjusted and they both said those adjustments make
sense and are well supported in a study in the American Meteorological
Society's Journal of Climate.

The study refutes the idea of a pause in global warming, "but frankly
common sense and looking at how Earth was responding over the past 18
years kind of makes this finding a 'duh' moment," wrote University of
Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd.

Chip Knappenberger of the Cato Institute, who doesn't doubt that
human-caused climate change is happening but does not agree with
mainstream scientists who say the problem is enormous, said this shows
"how messy the procedures are in putting the satellite data together."

The other major satellite temperature data set, run by University of
Alabama Hunstville professor John Christy, shows slight warming after
1998. But if 1998 is included in the data, it sees no warming. But that
should change with a warm 2016, Christy said. In fact, Christy used his
measurements to determine that February 2016 was 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit
above the average for the month — the largest such disparity for any
month since records were first kept, in 1979.

As far as what this means for people claiming no warming, scientists don't expect them to change.

"I don't know what Cruz, et al., will do now," Dessler said in an email.
"I think it will be increasingly difficult for them to claim that the
satellite data show now warming, although it may be possible to say that
it shows 'no significant warming.'"

Fraud in pursuit of politics undermines trust in government everywhere

Pure science undertaken for science’s own sake is as rare as a rainbow.
It’s certainly scarce in Washington, where the quest for knowledge is
vulnerable to the bias of politics. Skeptics of President Obama’s
climate change agenda say they see new evidence of fraud. If
administration officials are colluding with scientists to cook the
evidence, such as it might be, to demonstrate that the planet is
warming, the skeptics deserve everyone’s thanks.

Whistleblowers within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) complained last year that a major study by agency
researcher Thomas Karl, refuting evidence of a pause in global warming,
had been rushed to publication. The implication was that the study was
coordinated with Obama administration officials to add to the urgency of
the president’s climate change agenda in advance of the United Nations
Climate Change Conference in Paris. Republicans on the House Committee
on Science, Space and Technology issued a subpoena of records of NOAA
communications dealing with the study

The inquiry began afresh last month when Rep. Lamar Smith, wrote to NOAA
expressing disappointment “with the slow pace and limited scope of the
agency’s production [of such records],” which had yielded only 301
pages. Mr. Smith directed officials to broaden their search for relevant
documents. He said the committee had received a letter signed by 325
scientists, engineers, economists and other scholars questioning whether
the agency had properly peer-reviewed the “quality, objectivity,
utility and integrity” of the data used in the Karl study.

Data consist of facts, and facts can be cherry-picked to yield a desired
effect. In the NOAA study, researchers found that ocean temperatures
measured by ships were warmer than those recorded by buoys anchored in
place, and scientists “developed a method to correct the difference
between ship and buoy measurements.” Ship’s engines, however, can heat
nearby water and produce false readings. By including those values,
critics contend, the agency may have effectively erased evidence of the
global warming pause.

President Obama’s efforts to “re-engineer” the American energy industry
is based on the argument that combustion of fossil fuels endangers the
planet, and a rapid transition to renewable power sources is essential.
The argument was the basis for the Paris climate change agreement,
endorsed by nearly 200 nations. If documents were to emerge suggesting
temperature data was doctored to reach an expedient conclusion in the
NOAA study, and if White House officials were part of such a scheme,
that would be proof that science had been recruited to serve politics.
Trust in government would be further eroded.

This would not be the first instance of Obama-era back-channel scheming.
Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
issued a report last summer accusing the Environmental Protection
Agency of colluding with the Natural Resources Defense Council and other
“green” organizations to develop the president’s landmark Clean Power
Plan, which will saddle Americans with billions of dollars in higher
energy bills for decades to come. EPA officials quietly schemed with
environmentalists to write regulations reinforcing their shared climate
change agenda. The agency has denied the accusations.

Science must be free from pressure to validate political goals. If
findings and measurements are altered to serve a political agenda, the
findings are flawed. It’s called fraud, and should be punished.

Take in this abstract from the obviously mis-named journal Progress in Human Geography:

Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research

Mark Carey, M Jackson, Alessandro Antonello, Jaclyn Rushing

Abstract

Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental
change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers –
particularly related to epistemological questions about the production
of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus
proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1)
knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of
scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers.
Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political
ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of
gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems,
thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice
interactions.

Yes, I too was sure this was a parody, but in fact the lead author is
the associate dean at the University of Oregon. Do they really sit
around and say, “Gee—the gender of that glacier is uncertain to me. It
might be a trans-glacier, perhaps reversing course in the next cycle.
I’ll have to cross-reference it with my post-colonial epistemology
thesaurus.”

Well why not? I notice the recent Paris Agreement on climate change has, among other nonsense, this paragraph:

Acknowledging that climate change is a common concern of humankind,
Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect,
promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the
right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities,
migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable
situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality,
empowerment of women and intergenerational equity. . .

The current crash in oil prices is sowing the seeds of a powerful
rebound and a potential supply crunch by the end of the decade, but the
prize may go to the US shale industry rather Opec, the world's energy
watchdog has predicted.

America's shale oil producers and Canada's oil sands will come roaring
back from late 2017 onwards once the current brutal purge is over, a
cycle it described as the "rise, fall and rise again" of the fracking
industry.

"Anybody who believes the US revolution has stalled should think again.
We have been very surprised at how resilient it is," said Neil Atkinson,
head of oil markets at the International Energy Agency.

The IEA forecasts in its "medium-term" outlook for the next five years
that US production will fall by 600,000 barrels per day (b/d) this year
and 200,000 next year as the so-called "fracklog" of drilled wells is
finally cleared and the global market works off a surplus of 1m b/d.

But shale will come back to life within six months - far more quickly
than conventional mega-projects and offshore wells - once crude rebounds
to $60. Shale output is expected to reach new highs of 5m b/d by 2021.

This will boost total US production of oil and liquids by 1.3m b/d to
the once unthinkable level 14.4m b/d, widening the US lead over Saudi
Arabia and Russia.

Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, said this alone will not be
enough to avert the risk of a strategic oil crisis later in the decade,
given the exhaustion of existing wells and the dangerously low levels of
spare capacity in the world.

"Even if there were zero growth in demand, we would have to produce 3m
b/d just to stand still," he said, speaking at the IHS CERAWeek summit
of energy leaders in Texas.

Mr Birol said investment in oil exploration and production across the
world has been cut to the bone, falling 24pc last year and an estimated
17pc this year. This is a drop from $520bn to $320bn a year, far below
the minimum levels needed to keep up with future demand.

"It's not good news for oil security. Over the past 30 years we have
never seen oil investment dropping two years in a row," he said.

"It is easy for consumers to be lulled into complacency by ample stocks
and low prices today, but they should heed the writing on the wall: the
historic investment cuts raise the odds of unpleasant oil security
surprises in the not too distant future," he said.

The warnings were echoed by Opec's secretary-general, Abdalla El-Badri,
who said the current slump will lead to serious trouble when the cycle
turns. "It sows the seed for a very high price in the future," he said
at the CERAWeek forum.

Mr El-Badri said he had lived through six oil cycles over his career but
the surge of shale oil supply from the US has made this one of the most
vicious. "It is a supply bubble. This cycle is very nasty," he said.

The Opec chief admitted that the cartel has been caught badly off guard
by crash, blaming the wild moves on speculative forces with control over
5m "paper barrels" on the derivatives markets. "The fundamentals have
not changed that much," he said.

But Mr El-Badri sent mixed signals about the real problem in the crude
markets, letting slip that Opec and the US shale industry may not be
able to "live together" and that frackers will take advantage of output
cuts intended to stabilize the market. "If there is any increase in
price, shale will come back immediately," he said.

Contrary to widespread assumptions, the IEA report said Saudi Arabia and
the Opec club will lose market share, treading water as North America
and Brazil's "pre-salt" basin in the Atlantic account for most of the
growth in global output by the early 2020s. Algeria, Venezuela, Nigeria
and Indonesia are all going into decline.

Iran's grand plan to reach 5m b/d and regain its place as the cartel's
number two is dismissed as "aspirational". It will struggle to add much
once it has recaptured its pre-sanctions level of 3.6m b/d. Iran's major
fields are 70 years old and need sophisticated technology, yet foreign
investors are wary of taking the plunge.

Outside Opec, there will be a steady erosion of output in China, Mexico,
Colombia, Egypt, Oman and the North Sea, all chipping away at global
supply and leaving the world vulnerable as demand rises by an average of
1.2m b/d each year - hitting 100m b/d by 2020.

China's demand will ratchet upwards by an accumulated 2.5m b/d even as
its own output slips, a scissor effect likely to tighten the global
market relentlessly from 2017 onwards.
A table showing selected sources of non-Opec supply changes

The IEA report implicitly calls into question Opec's strategy of
flooding the market in order to cripple of the US shale industry. Asked
if the policy had failed, Mr Birol deflected the question
diplomatically.

"I wouldn't could call it failure of this group or that group, but there
is a new fact of life: we can produce oil at $50-$60. It is the success
of oil industry," he said.

While the Opec strategy is finally forcing frackers to shut down, it has
taken far longer than expected and may prove fleeting since private
equity groups armed with a $60bn war chest are waiting to buy up the
assets of failed shale companies.

The strategy has been prohibitively costly for Opec itself. Annual
revenues have dropped from a peak of $1.2 trillion to around $400bn at
today's prices, and a large part of this is a result of Opec's own
actions.
A graph showing US oil production

The IEA said US frackers have been able to cut costs by 25pc-30pc and
even more in the Permian Basin of West Texas. "A year ago it was widely
believed that this would happen by the end of 2015 but that view has
proved to be very wide of the mark. In 2014 and again in 2015 supply
exceeded demand by massive margins," it said.

Much of the confusion is over the US "rig-count", which has dropped from
1,500 to 440. "Oil production has not fallen nearly as quickly as the
rig-count alone would suggest," it said.

Russia is perhaps the biggest casualty, given that it is trying to fund a
superpower military status and cover half its budget comes from oil and
gas revenues. Its output will fall by 275,000 b/d as the old Soviet
fields in western Siberia go into decline.

The Vankor, Uvat and Verkhnechonsk fields all boosted growth last year
but there is little else new on the horizon. "Russia is expected to see
the steepest output declines," said Mr Birol.
A table showing the Chinese oil demand

Ultimately, a fresh oil price spike or just a return to prices of $80
sows the seeds of its own destruction for the industry. It is likely to
accelerate the shift to electric cars as the technology comes of age,
and the COP21 climate accords start to bite.

That is a story for the 2020s. Mr Birol said it is a "heroic task" to
interest anybody in the Houston oil fraternity in climate change

The article below points out something that I have often reported,
that coral reefs are not easily damaged, bounce back well from damage
and can be found in a wide range of water temperatures. One lot
even bounced back after being hit with a thermonuclear detonation!

I have for some time now been collecting on one site
all the stories I see about coral reefs and a browse through that site
will show you what I mean. The academic journal article underlying
the report below is here

An ‘inherent bias’ in scientific journals in favour of more calamitous
predictions has excluded research showing that marine creatures are not
damaged by ocean acidification.

Claims that coral reefs are doomed because human emissions are making
the oceans more acidic have been exaggerated, a review of the science
has found.

An “inherent bias” in scientific journals in favour of more calamitous
predictions has excluded research showing that marine creatures are not
damaged by ocean acidification, which is caused by the sea absorbing
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

It has been dubbed the “evil twin of climate change” and hundreds of
studies have claimed to show that it destroys coral reefs and other
marine life by making it harder for them to develop shells or skeletons.

The review found that many studies had used flawed methods, subjecting
marine creatures to sudden increases in carbon dioxide that would never
be experienced in real life.

“In some cases it was levels far beyond what would ever be reached even
if we burnt every molecule of carbon on the planet,” Howard Browman, the
editor of ICES Journal of Marine Science, who oversaw the review, said.

He added that this had distracted attention from more urgent threats to
reefs such as agricultural pollution, overfishing and tourism.

Dr Browman, who is also principal research scientist at the Norwegian
Institute of Marine Research, found there had been huge increase in
articles on ocean acidification in recent years, rising from five in
2005 to 600 last year.

He said that a handful of influential scientific journals and lobbying
by international organisations had turned ocean acidification into a
major issue.

“Such journals tend to publish doom and gloom stories ... stated without
equivocation,” he said. The bias in favour of doom-laden articles was
partly the result of pressure on scientists to produce eye-catching
work, he added.

“You won’t get a job unless you publish an article that is viewed as of
significant importance to society. People often forget that scientists
are people and have the same pressures on them and the same kind of
human foibles. Some are driven by different things. They want to be
prominent.”

Dr Browman invited scientists around the world to contribute studies on
ocean acidification for a special edition of his journal. More than half
of the 44 studies selected for publication found that raised levels of
CO2 had little or no impact on marine life, including crabs, limpets,
sea urchins and sponges.

Dr Browman said that the edition had demonstrated that there was “a body
of work out there that people had difficulty publishing elsewhere” and
that “not every study shows that Nemo is going to be doomed”, a
reference to the reef-dwelling clownfish in the Disney film Finding
Nemo.

The term ocean acidification was also a misnomer, he said, because it
suggested that the oceans could become acidic instead of alkaline.

“The oceans will never become acid because there is such a huge
buffering capacity in the oceans. We simply could never release enough
CO2 into the atmosphere to cause the pH to go below 7 [the point in the
pH scale at which a solution becomes acidic].

“If they had called it something else, such as ‘lower alkalinity’, it wouldn’t have been as catchy,” he said.

Dr Browman, a marine scientist for 35 years, said he was not saying that
ocean acidification posed no threat, but that he believed that “a
higher level of academic scepticism” should be applied to the topic.

Hoagy is the go-to man about coral at the University of Queensland --
and a fervent Warmist. He has come out of his shell in order to
hype up alarm about Australia's Great Barrier Reef. He went quiet
for a while when his own research showed the reef to be very resilient
but he seems to have recovered from that blow, as he has returned to the
fray a few times in recent years.

Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

I
was born a short distance from the reef in Far North Queensland so I
have heard about it off and on for most of my life. And for most
of my 72 years, I have heard of imminent doom facing it. But
the doom has not happened. All that has happened is that the reef has
gone through periods of death and rebirth that differ from human cycles
of death and rebirth mainly in that the coral deaths have never affected
the whole reef. And so the reef is still thriving. It is
still a major tourist attraction.

Hoagy's reply is below.
As you can see it actually does nothing to refute the many research
findings about coral survival in all sorts of settings. He just skates
around them. Hoagy is losing it.

But maybe he lost it long
ago. As I have often pointed out, corals are at their most prolific in
the Torres Strait area, Queensland's warmest waters. So how is
warming harmful to them? Hoagy has never answered that as far as I
can see. The most that warming would do would be a slight
alteration to the distribution of species -- and I am sure Hoagy knows
that

If you read The Australian or Britain’s The Times this week, you might
have concluded that concerns about ocean warming and acidification are
all a big beat-up.

Based on a study of the expert literature, the newspapers ran with a
line that the marine science expert community has a penchant for “doom
and gloom stories which has skewed academic reporting” because we only
report the bad bits and rarely the good.

Given that the majority of scientists in this area (including the
hundreds working in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
process) do not feel this is the case, what is going on?

Newsflash: the dog isn’t barking

Reporting that a dog isn’t barking can sometimes be as important as
reporting when it is. However, if we were to follow the newspapers'
rationale, the scientific community should be pumping out endless
scientific papers that report that nothing has happened. This would lead
to numerous and repetitive studies showing that there is no significant
effect (if that were indeed the case).

Print space in science journals is in short and coveted supply. To
publish in a respected journal, you need to have something new,
significant and well supported to say. In the case of the impacts of
ocean acidification, it would indeed be newsworthy if a study reported
that a set of organisms was unaffected by ocean acidification (to use
our analogy, a newsworthy non-barking dog).

Indeed, some studies have shown precisely that, in the case of some
invertebrate and fish species. These studies have received considerable
attention given their departure from a literature that is finding a vast
number of species that are affected.

This is not surprising. But after several studies have convincingly
documented how one group of organisms responds, the novelty,
significance and appeal of publishing further papers about those
organisms quickly falls away. That doesn’t mean that the observations of
no effect have been discarded or demoted in importance. The conclusion
of “no effect” will remain until credible studies demonstrating the
opposite come along. That is, until a study finds a dog that is barking.

Of course, once we have established that dogs bark, there are likely to
be many papers to produce about the significant nuances of dogs and
their barking such as the effect of size on barking, how important
evening light might be for stimulating juvenile dogs to bark and so on.
Again, this the way science produces detailed insight into significant
issues like ocean warming and acidification.

Paper weight versus significance?

The importance of an idea is not a simple function of the number of
papers. We don’t rate an idea or conclusion solely on the weight of the
pages on one side versus another. This is where the newspapers and the
original study wrongly assumed that the smaller proportion of “no
effect” papers on the subject of ocean acidification was an indication
of “skewed academic reporting”.

In reality, the massive and growing proportion of studies showing that
ocean warming and acidification have real effects on ocean life shows
that there is much to learn and be concerned about when it comes to
these issues.

If the headlines from The Australian and The Times were correct, then
conclusions about risks associated with ocean warming and acidification
could be refuted at every turn. Our projections of the future of coral
reefs, based on our allegedly distorted scientific literature, could be
safely ignored.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Over the past year or so, many marine scientists like myself have been
watching a very large blob of ocean water, up to 2? warmer than normal,
across the equatorial Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We have been
predicting substantial mass coral bleaching across the planet as 2016
unfolds.

At first, you might question our hypothesis and projections – these
changes seem to be small changes in sea temperature. Yet we know these
small variations can have huge implications. An increase of as little as
1-2? on top of regular summer temperatures can mean the difference
between life and death for coral reefs.

However, the past, plus a rich and valuable scientific literature, has
taught us that these changes are serious. The Great Barrier Reef, for
instance, has lost up to 10% of its corals to these warming events over
the past three decades. Over the past 25 years, relatively short periods
of anomalously high sea temperatures have killed up to 95% of corals on
some reefs.

The evidence suggests that we are likely to lose most corals worldwide
in as little as 30 to 40 years if we continue to warm the climate at
current rates.

Science works

The ultimate test is whether the elevated sea surface temperatures (the
“warm blob”) translates into impacts on the ground. True to expert
predictions, Hawaii and many other parts of the Pacific, including
Australia, have begun bleaching on cue – hardly evidence of biased and
unreliable science.

And as the year rolls out, we should see mass coral bleaching and
mortality across the western Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and, later,
the Northern Hemisphere as the year progresses and the third global
bleaching event rolls out around the planet. We should also see the
significant loss of corals from many parts of the world.

There is no doubt that this type of information sounds alarming. It is
not, however, a consequence of biased or skewed science. Rather, it is a
function of the careful build-up of significant ideas to which we would
be well advised to pay attention.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

6 March, 2016

"Old sooty material"! A change off CO2

Warmists are always telling us that Greenland ice is melting and it's
all due to CO2 in the air. But below we read that "Old sooty
material" in the ice is the culprit

Greenland's snowy surface has been getting darker over the past 20
years, absorbing more heat from the sun and increasing snow melt.

That's the conclusion of a 30-year study of satellite data, which found
that the darkening and melting have accelerated due to 'feedback loops'.

The trend is set to continue, with the surface's reflectivity - or
albedo - decreasing by as much as 10 per cent by the end of the century,
researchers said.

The findings have global implications, because fresh meltwater pouring
into the ocean from Greenland raises sea levels and could affect ocean
ecology.

While soot blowing in from wildfires contributes to the problem, experts were surprised to find they are not driving the change.

Professor Marco Tedesco, a researcher at Columbia University and adjunct
scientist at Nasa Goddard Institute of Space Studies, said the darkening is caused by old sooty material locked below the surface of the ice sheet.

As the ice starts to melt in summer, dust and soot are exposed and
darken the pristine snowy surface. Then, as the snow refreezes, the
grains get larger because they become stuck together.

Both the old dark material and the new grainier snow decrease the
reflectivity of the ice sheet – a property called the albedo –
particularly in the infrared range.

This means that more solar radiation is absorbed, leading to faster melting in a potentially-disastrous feedback loop.

The study used satellite data from 1981 to 2012 and found that, at first, there was very little change.

But from about 1996, the darkening increased and the ice began absorbing about two per cent more solar radiation per decade.

At the same time, summer temperatures in Greenland increased by about
0.74°C per decade, due to the effects of the North Atlantic Oscillation.

This is a natural large-scale weather cycle bringing warm, moist air from the south.

The pattern shifted back again in 2013 to 2014, but by then the ice
sheet had become more sensitive and surface melting spiked again in
2015.

'It's a complex system of interaction between the atmosphere and the ice sheet surface,' Professor Tedesco said.

'You don't necessarily have to have a "dirtier" snowpack to make it dark.

'It might look clean to our eyes but be more effective in absorbing solar radiation.'

'Overall, what matters, it is the total amount of solar energy that the surface absorbs. This is the real driver of melting.'

Between January 9 and February 4 this year, 29 sperm whales got stranded
and died on English, German and Dutch beaches. Environmentalists and
the news media offered multiple explanations – except the most obvious
and likely one: offshore wind farms.

Indeed, that area has the world’s biggest concentration of offshore wind
turbines, and there is ample evidence that their acoustic pollution can
interfere with whale communication and navigation.

However, Britain’s Guardian looked for answers everywhere but in the
right place. That’s not surprising, as it tends to support wind energy
no matter the cost to people or the environment. After consulting with a
marine environmental group, the paper concluded: “The North Sea acts as
a trap.… It’s virtually impossible for [whales] to find their way out
through the narrow English Channel.”

No it’s not. These intelligent animals would naturally have found their
way to and through the Channel by simply following the coast of England
or continental Europe. But the author seems determined to pursue his
“explanation,” even when it becomes increasingly illogical. “The
[trapped] whales become dehydrated because they obtain their water from
squid,” he argues, before acknowledging that “the dead Dutch and German
animals were well-fed,” and that the North Sea’s squid population has
increased in recent years.

The article discards Royal Navy sonar and explosives, because “big naval
exercises in UK waters are unusual in midwinter.” Finally, the author
concludes with this quote from his purported expert: “When there’s a
mass stranding, it’s always wise to look at possible human effects. But,
at the moment, I don’t see anything pointing in that direction.” He
should look a bit harder. Not everyone is so blind.

Indeed, “researchers at the University of St. Andrews have found that
the noise made by offshore wind farms can interfere with a whale’s
sonar, and can in tragic cases see them driven onto beaches where they
often die,” a UK Daily Mail article observed.

It is certainly possible that permanent damage to the cetaceans’ middle
and inner ears, and thus to their built-in sonar, can result from large
air guns used during seismic surveys and from violent bursts of noise
associated with pilings being rammed into the rock bed. Wind promoters
themselves admit that their pile-driving can be heard up to 50 miles (80
kilometers) underwater, and can be harmful to whales that happen to be
nearby. But unless these injuries cause external bleeding, they are very
difficult to detect.

Natural phenomena such as seaquakes, underwater volcanic eruptions and
meteorites crashing into the oceans have likely been the cause of whale
beachings throughout history, by injuring the animals’ inner ears and
sonar organs, frightening and disorienting them, and causing them to
seek refuge in shallow waters. In more recent years, “military exercises
using mid-frequency sonar have been linked quite clearly to the
disorientation and death of beaked whales,” says The Guardian.

Low frequency sonar can be even more dangerous, the Natural Resource
Defense Council asserts. “Some systems operate at more than 235
decibels,” the NRDC has said, “producing sound waves that can travel
across tens or even hundreds of miles of ocean. During testing off the
California coast, noise from the Navy’s main low-frequency sonar system
was detected across the breadth of the northern Pacific Ocean.”

The U.S. Navy itself has recognized the danger that sonar systems
represent for marine mammals. As reported in Science magazine: “In a
landmark study, the U.S. Navy has concluded that it killed at least six
whales in an accident involving common ship-based sonar. The finding,
announced late last month by the Navy and the U.S. National Marine
Fisheries Service (NMFS), may complicate Navy plans to field a powerful
new sonar system designed to detect enemy submarines at long distances,”
despite how important that system and its submarine and surface ship
counterparts are for national security.

It has been said the “low-frequency active sonar” from this system would
be the loudest sound ever put into the seas, The Guardian states. But
wind turbines also emit low frequency noise, including dangerous
infrasound. At sea, these vibrations are transmitted via the masts to
the water, and via the pilings to the rock bed. They can travel up to 31
miles (50 kilometers).

Granted, the acoustic pollution caused by sonar – particularly powerful
navy systems – is greater than that from wind turbines. But wind turbine
noise and infrasound are nearly constant, last as long as the turbines
are in place and come from multiple directions, as in the areas where
the whales were recently stranded.

On land, although the wind industry continues to deny any culpability,
evidence is mounting that low frequency and particularly infrasound
waves emitted by wind turbines have significant adverse effects on local
residents, including sleep deprivation, headaches, tachycardia
(abnormally rapid heart rates) and a dozen other ailments. Underwater, a
milieu where sound waves travel much farther, it would be irresponsible
and unscientific to argue that whales are not affected by operating
wind turbines, all the more because cetaceans use their sonar to “see”
what’s around them

As scientists have pointed out, “It is likely that acoustic masking by
anthropogenic sounds is having an increasingly prevalent impact on
animals’ access to acoustic information that is essential for
communication and other important activities, such as navigation and
prey/predator detection.”

“Blinded” by this masking, whales and dolphins could seek refuge in
shallow waters, away from big ships and killer whales. There, low tides
could surprise them, as large pelagic species have limited experience
with tidal flows.

In September 2012, 19 pilot whales, a minke whale and a large sei whale
beached on the coast of Scotland opposite an area where air guns were
being used by ships surveying the ocean floor, as a prelude to
installing offshore wind farms. “A second pod of 24 pilot whales was
spotted in shallow water by Cellardyke around the same time, but [it]
returned to sea without beaching,” the article noted.

Offshore turbines were also associated with “many” stillborn baby seals
washing up onshore near the UK’s Scroby Sands wind farm in June 2005.
“It's hard not to conclude the wind farm is responsible,” the author
concluded.

Many more similar deaths may well have been caused by wind farms at sea.
The scientific and environmental literature abounds in warnings about
risks to marine mammals from man-made noise.

Modern 8-megawatt offshore turbines are 656 feet (200 meters) above the
waves; their rotating blades sweep across a 538-foot (164-meter)
diameter. Those enormous blades create powerful pulsating infrasound and
exact a toll on many species of marine birds, and even on bats that are
attracted to the turbines as far as 9 miles (14 km) offshore.

In a February 2005 letter, the Massachusetts Audubon Society estimated
that the proposed Cape Cod wind project alone would kill up to 6,600
marine birds each year, including the roseate tern, which is on the
endangered list.

Do we really want to add marine mammals to the slaughter of birds and
bats, by expanding this intermittent, harmful, enormously expensive and
heavily subsidized energy source in marine habitats?

In addition, having forests of these enormous turbines off our coasts
will greatly increase the risk of collisions for surface vessels,
especially in storms or dense fog, as well as for submarines. It will
also impair radar and sonar detection of hostile ships and low-flying
aircraft, including potential terrorists, and make coastal waters more
dangerous for Coast Guard helicopters and other rescue operations.

The offshore wind industry makes no sense from an economic,
environmental, defense or shipping perspective. To exempt these enormous
installations from endangered species and other laws that are applied
with a heavy hand to all other industries – and even to the U.S. and
Royal Navy – is irresponsible, and even criminal.

Via email

The Inconvenient Facts the Media Ignore About Climate Change

Rep. Lamar Smith

Americans in large numbers are turning off TV newscasts, canceling
subscriptions to newspapers, and seeking other sources of news. Distrust
of the national media has hit an all-time high.

According to a recent Gallup poll, six in ten Americans now have little
or no confidence in the national media to report the news fully,
accurately, and fairly. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that
65 percent of Americans believe that the national news media have a
negative effect on our country.

Americans are frustrated because they know that many of the “news
stories” they read are only opinion columns in disguise. If the story
does not fit the liberal worldview, then facts are ignored, dissent is
silenced, and Americans are told what to think. Perhaps one of the worst
examples of one-sided, biased reporting involves global warming.

Those who reject the liberal viewpoint that climate change is the
greatest threat to our country are ridiculed and ignored. For example,
the Associated Press recently amended its stylebook to recommend that
those who question the science behind global warming be called climate
change “doubters” instead of “skeptics.” But this is inaccurate, since
many “skeptics” don’t doubt that climate change has occurred.

Liberal groups continue to attempt to silence debate. The repeated
claims that “the debate is over” and that “97 percent of scientists
agree that human-caused global warming is real” are false and mislead
the public. In testimony before the Science Committee, a lead author of
the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated
that the 97 percent estimate “just crumbles when you touch it.”

The source of this “97 percent” myth is a discredited study that
attempted to categorize scholarly articles on climate change by the
position the papers took on the issue. But most of the papers never took
a position on climate change at all. This has not stopped the liberal
national media from touting this illegitimate statistic.

Silencing debate is contrary to the scientific method. If these groups
were confident about their arguments, they would welcome more debate to
test their theories. However, some media outlets, such as the Los
Angeles Times, have changed their policies and no longer accept letters
to the editor from those who question human-made climate change. That
this would happen in a democracy where free speech is enshrined in the
Constitution is unbelievable.

Scientists who are not alarmists agree that climate change is a complex
subject with many variables. But the liberal national media instead
chooses to focus on human contributions and usually fails to provide
both sides.

For example, the national media hyped NASA’s finding that 2014 was the
hottest year on record. Ignored was the footnote that revealed that NASA
was only 38 percent certain this was accurate. Less than fifty-fifty.
Americans would have been better served by a coin toss.

Too often, these alarmist announcements are based on manipulations of
existing data. And when Congress or independent researchers question
federal agencies about the data, they are criticized as “attacking
scientists.”

Particularly regrettable is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) fails to include all relevant data sources in its
monthly temperature news releases. Atmospheric satellite data,
considered by many to be the most reliable, has clearly showed no
warming for the past two decades. This fact is well documented, but it
does not fit the liberal politics of the administration or the national
media.

NOAA also published a controversial study last year where scientists
altered global surface temperature data and widely publicized their
results as refuting the two-decade pause in global warming. This week, a
new peer-reviewed study was published in the journal Nature that,
according to one of the authors, shows “reduced rates of surface
warming” and “essentially refutes” NOAA’s study. Shouldn’t the media
acknowledge that their alarmist headlines are based on incomplete
information?

Americans will continue to distrust the liberal national media until the
media provide objective coverage of the news. Americans deserve all the
facts that surround climate change, not just those that the national
media want to promote.

It's become a stretch to call Chief Justice John Roberts a conservative
justice, or even a consistent one. On Thursday, Roberts rejected a plea
by the State of Michigan and 20 other states to block the implementation
of the Environmental Protection Agency's new air pollution rules.

The states reasoned that the EPA should be blocked from enforcing
regulations on power plants because the Supreme Court ruled last June in
Michigan v. EPA that the rule was illegal. In that original ruling, the
late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority, "[The] EPA strayed
well beyond the bounds of reasonable interpretation in concluding that
cost is not a factor relevant to the appropriateness of regulating power
plants."

But despite those strong words issued less than a year ago, Roberts
denied the states' petition. The EPA had argued its rule — though
declared illegal by the high court — was being revised, and the states
wouldn't be harmed by enforcement in the meantime. "He never even turned
it over to the rest of the court for a decision," wrote Hot Air's Jazz
Shaw. "Roberts just flatly and unilaterally rejected the case on his
own. ... I don't see this decision going down in Supreme Court history
on the same level as Roberts' botched Obamacare ruling, but it's
certainly one more straw piled on the camel's back when it comes to his
conservative bona fides."

In response to Roberts' action, the EPA said its now-protected standards
will help protect "millions of American children" from pollution. Even
though it lost last year, thanks to Justice Roberts, the EPA won and is
encouraged in its hyper regulation of America.

Anything but people. Charie Baker is what passes for a Republican in Massachusetts but we read of him:

"Renewable
energy and climate change were a major theme in Governor Charlie
Baker's State of the Commonwealth speech, as he highlighted his support
for "ambitious goals" to reduce our state's carbon pollution through a
"diversified, sustainable, and affordable approach."

MOST POLITICIANS would be loathe to be associated with anything slithery and potentially deadly.

But Governor Charlie Baker must feel his sky-high approval rating leaves
him some points to play with. Baker, who has been shy to endorse a
candidate in the Republican presidential primary, has endorsed a plan to
populate a perfectly good island, in the Quabbin Reservoir, with 150
poisonous rattlesnakes.

According to the state’s website, the endangered timber rattlesnake, aka
Crotalus horridus, is a large, heavy-bodied snake in the pit-viper
family. Adults grow anywhere from 36 to 60 inches long. The state’s
science experiment would involve breeding these creatures at the Roger
Williams Park Zoo, in Rhode Island, and, when they’re nice and big,
releasing them on Mount Zion Island.

But don’t worry, says Tom French, assistant director of the
Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife: The snakes will be
implanted with radio transmitters so we can know where they are at all
times. That way, in the event one of these snakes survives the swim — oh
yes, they can swim — to the mainland, the state will be able to grab
them before they threaten an unsuspecting hiker.

Sorry, but that’s supposed to be a comforting thought? If anything, the idea of a bionic snake doubles the freaky factor.

If the state’s Fisheries and Wildlife officials are in the mood to bring
things back, there are dozens of other species on the endangered list
that may be a better pick for revival. For example, there’s the
“tiny-flowered buttercup,” an “inconspicuous, spring-flowering member of
the buttercup family.” Or if you really want to go the reptile route,
how about the bog turtle?

At least the threatened piping plover — the bane of Massachusetts
beachgoers, who are banned from large swaths of prime sand every summer
to protect the birds — have some notion of cuteness about them. That,
and you know, the fact that they aren’t poisonous to said beachgoers.
There is nothing cute about a giant snake with two venom-conducting
fangs in the front of its mouth.

If you’re not freaked out by the snake itself, perhaps this will do it:
State officials will reportedly visit the island up to eight times a
month to check on the slithery new residents. (I’m picturing Governor
Baker as the star of one of those wildlife documentaries: “Crikey, it’s a
giant poisonous rattlesnake!”)

In other words, your tax dollars will be paying for snake baby-sitting.
As much fun as this Jurassic Park-like experiment sounds, perhaps those
snake supervision resources would be better spent on something like
full-day kindergarten for our human residents.

I have no doubt that the good people at Fisheries and Wildlife are
well-intentioned. Their stated mission is “conservation — including
restoration, protection and management — of fish and wildlife resources
for the benefit and enjoyment of the public.”

But I do doubt how many Bay Staters are going to benefit from, and enjoy, having more snakes slithering around.

You’ve got to hand it to the snakes. Everyone dreams of having their own
private island to live on someday. That’s exactly what the rattlers are
getting, and they don’t even have to pay taxes.

Maybe they have one heck of a lobbyist. Even General Electric didn’t get that good a deal.

Or, maybe, this plan is just a ridiculous waste of the state’s time and resources.

Congressional investigators have obtained an internal audit from George
Mason University that suggests that one of its professors—a major
proponent of man-made climate change—mismanaged millions of dollars in
taxpayer money by “double dipping” in violation of university policy.

The professor, Jagadish Shukla, received $511,410 in combined
compensation from George Mason University and his own taxpayer-funded
climate change research center in 2014 alone, without receiving required
permission from university officials, the audit found.

The audit looking at more than a decade of Shukla’s finances is
disclosed in a letter sent this morning from Rep. Lamar Smith,
R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, to the inspector general of the National Science Foundation.

“The committee’s investigation has revealed serious concerns related to
Dr. Shukla’s management of taxpayer money,” Smith writes in the letter, a
copy of which was obtained by The Daily Signal.

Since 2001, Shukla used his research center to pay himself and his wife
more than $5.6 million in compensation, “an excessive amount for a
nonprofit relying on taxpayer money,” Smith writes.

In the letter, Smith offers to assist Allison Lerner, the National
Science Foundation’s inspector general, in any investigation she “may
deem appropriate” in response to the GMU audit.

The Daily Signal previously reported that the Texas Republican began
making inquiries last fall about reports that Shukla had received tens
of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants to study climate change
in addition to his publicly funded salary.

Shukla, 71, who specializes in atmospheric, oceanic, and earth studies
at GMU, is also the founder and president of the Rockville, Md.-based
Institute of Global Environment and Society, or IGES, a nonprofit outfit
that is now the focus of congressional scrutiny.

Smith writes:

"IGES has apparently received $63 million from
taxpayer funded grants since 2001, comprising over 98 percent of its
total revenue. These grants were awarded by the NSF [National Science
Foundation], National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Since 2001,
as president of IGES, Dr. Shukla appears to have paid himself and his
wife a total of $5.6 million in compensation—an excessive amount for a
nonprofit relying on taxpayer money. This information raises serious
questions about Dr. Shukla’s financial management of IGES"

Steve McIntyre, a statistician noted for challenging the data and
methodology used in United Nations reports on climate change, offers a
detailed analysis of Shukla’s compensation and how it squares with
university and government policies in his Climate Audit blog.

The India-born Shukla, who joined the faculty of Fairfax, Va.-based
George Mason University in 1993, drew a salary there of $314,000 by
2014, according to Climate Audit.

Smith also raised concerns about the relationship between Shukla’s
“partisan political activity” and taxpayer funds in a letter he sent to
the professor in October.

Shukla’s name appears on top of a list of 20 signers of a letter sent to
President Barack Obama; Attorney General Loretta Lynch; and John
Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy asking
them to investigate corporations and other groups skeptical of climate
change under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

Federal prosecutors typically use that law, known as RICO, to pursue organized crime.

Some who hold that man-made climate change is not established scientific
fact say Shukla’s “RICO 20” letter essentially calls for the federal
government to prosecute companies and scientists who dissent from the
Obama administration’s views on climate change.

However, signatories who spoke with The Daily Signal said they advocated
RICO investigations only if it could be demonstrated that certain
climate change skeptics had “knowingly deceived the public.”

No such RICO investigations appear to be under way. But by putting his
signature at the top of the letter to Obama and Lynch, Shukla drew
scrutiny and attention to his own activities.

In the new letter, Smith details key findings of the George Mason University audit. He writes:

"It appears IGES may have improperly commingled
taxpayer funds with private charitable contributions when it shifted
$100,000 to an education charity in India founded by Dr. Shukla, the
Institute of Global Education Equality of Opportunity and Prosperity
Inc. This raises concerns that taxpayer money intended to be used
for climate research was redirected to an overseas organization favored
by Dr. Shukla".

The Texas Republican adds:

"The recent audit conducted by GMU appears to reveal
that Dr. Shukla engaged in what is referred to as “double dipping.” In
other words, he received his full salary at GMU, while working full time
at IGES and receiving a full salary there. This practice may have
violated GMU’s university policy, his employment contract with the
university, and Virginia state law.

For example, according to GMU’s Faculty Handbook,
‘outside employment and paid consulting cannot exceed the equivalent of
one day per work week without written authorization from the collegiate
dean or institute director.’ Dr. Shukla violated this policy [in] five
different time periods from 2003 to 2015 because he failed to receive
approval for paid consulting in excess of one day per week. This allowed
Dr. Shukla to double dip by receiving his full salary from GMU while
receiving an excessive salary for working 28 hours per week at IGES.

In another instance, in 2014, Dr. Shukla received
$292,688 in compensation from IGES for working 28 hours per week while
simultaneously receiving 100 percent of his GMU salary. In total,
Dr. Shukla received $511,410 in compensation from IGES and GMU during
2014, without ever receiving the appropriate permission from GMU
officials, apparently violating university policy."

Instead of serving the public interest with his nonprofit research
center on climate change, Smith concludes in the letter, Shukla put
taxpayers in a position where they “picked up the tab for excessive
double dipping salaries, nepotism, and questionable money transfers.”

‘Serious Risks’

“The irony here is over the top,” said Marlo Lewis Jr., a senior fellow
at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who writes on global warming and
energy policy, among other issues.

“First, Shukla appears to have made millions from taxpayers through
funding improprieties,” Lewis said. “But Shukla also led the call for a
RICO investigation of organizations challenging climate orthodoxy—a
campaign which his co-ringleader at GMU admits aims to impose financial
penalties on political opponents while yielding payouts to further
underwrite the climate alarm movement.”

Last year, CEI asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate
Shukla’s nonprofit research center, the one now the subject of the House
probe.

"Shukla and his comrades … accuse fossil fuel
companies of hiding climate risks from the American people, an
impossible offense given the billions in annual government, pressure
group, and media spending on climate advocacy. Yet, they refuse to
acknowledge that their agenda, which would put an energy-starved world
on an energy diet, poses serious risks to the world’s people, especially
the poorest of the poor. By hiding climate policy risk, Shukla and his
allies have deceived the American people. By his own logic, he should be
the target of a RICO investigation".

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

4 March, 2016

If I were religious, I would believe that God had a sense of humor

I am the most utter atheist you can imagine. Following Rudolf
Carnap, I believe that metaphysical statements are meaningless. So the
statement "God exists" is meaningless.

But I would like to believe otherwise and Warmists encourage me in
that. There was some slight global warming in the late C20
and alarmists promptly assumed that would go on forever. So God
taught them a lesson in humility. He made C21 a time of utter
climate stasis. There were no statistically significant
temperature changes during C21. In some years the temperature
idled upward and in some it idled downwards. But no overall trend

But his latest wheeze is the best of all. He finally allowed a
slight global temperature rise in 2015 but ensured that it coincided
with a period of of ZERO CO2 rise. See below.

So he got them for their frauds going and coming. If there was a
CO2 rise there was no temperature rise and if there was a temperature
rise there was no CO2 rise.

I am tempted to say: "Allah Akhbar" ("God is great!")

Total and utter crooks

Pesky CO2 stasis

Despite its utter triviality, the 2015 temperature rise produced by NOAA
of 13 hundredths of one degree has been hailed with gladsome hearts by
Warmists. Their enthusiasm has however been tempered by the well-known
fact that 2015 hosted an El Nino event, a natural climate oscillation
that is known to produce a rise in termperatures. So it is
perfectly clear that the 2015 temperature is no proof of anthropogenic
warming. Warmists don't like having their toys taken off them,
however, so Jim Hansen and others have dismissed the El Nino
contribution as slight.

So how great or small was it? They do not say. They offer no
calibration or adjustment. The adjustment kings don't do that
adjustment! Yet an adjustment as good as any other they use would be to
take the spike observed for the previous El Nino and simply subtract it
from the 2015 temperature. Not hard! Warmists often found
fault with skeptics who did not correct for the effects of the 1998 El
Nino so it is quite a travesty that they are not making any
corrections for the current El Nino.

But something that needs no inferences at all is the CO2 record. If the
temperature rise was anthropogenic, global warming theory tells us that
CO2 was responsible. It tells us that the temperature spike should
have been preceded by a spike in CO2 levels in the atmosphere. So
did that happen? Was there an unusual rise in CO2 levels during
2015?

For information about CO2 levels I like to turn to the Cape Grim figures,
as it is much better located than Mauna Loa, which is near an active
volcano. So I first looked to Cape Grim, in Northern
Tasmania. And the last 4 months they had up showed exactly the
opposite of the Warmist story. The levels were drastically
plateaued. They showed variations only in the decimal points of
CO2 ppm.

I was rather pleased with that finding but I was vexed that CSIRO had
still not put up the figures from December 2015 or January 2016.
February 2016 would have been nice too but I could cut them some slack
on that one. And WHY were they so behind with their posting?
Were the more recent figures even more devastating?

So I turned to Mauna Loa. And my first look at the Mauna Loa site
was an instant laugh. They showed that the difference between
January 2015 and January 2016 was only 2.56 ppm. But I still
wanted the monthly data and I was pleased to see that they do have the whole of 2015 plus January 2016 up.

And the picture was crystal clear. The 2015 figures as a whole just
oscillated. It was up and down around the 400ppm mark for the
whole of the year. Threre was nothing to explain the 2015
temperature change. It's only the January 2016 figure that edged up a
bit.

So even that headline figure that gave me an immediate laugh did not
represent 2015. They got a CO2 rise only by courtesy of January
2016. They must be steaming with frustration. I always go
back as far as I can into the source data when I think something is
fishy and did I find stinking fish this time!

How steaming were they? The following footnote on their site probably
covers it: "The last year of data are still preliminary, pending
recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks. The
Mauna Loa data are being obtained at an altitude of 3400 m in the
northern subtropics, and may not be the same as the globally averaged
CO2 concentration at the surface". They don't like their own data.

So the 2015 temperature rise was WHOLLY due to El Nino or some other
natural effect. What a come-down! Once again we see the
Green/Left need lies and deceptions to support their narratives.

Be Prepared For Latest UAH Satellite Global Temperature Data

At last El Nino has shown up in the satellite data. Warmists
will say it was due to CO2 but since the 2015 temperature rise was
WHOLLY due to El Nino and natural influences (see above), we must expect
the same for this rise too. We don't have the CO2 figures for
February yet but January showed only a tiny rise.

The media will be spreading catastrophic global warming news from the latest satellite temperature data from March 1, 2016.

The University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) posted its latest
satellite global temperature data that spans until the end of February
2016. This is a data set from 1979 until present when satellite
temperature measurements were first made. The data follows:

Latest Global Average Tropospheric Temperatures

Due to the super El Nino weather system along the Equator on the Western
side of South America, this February was the hottest global temperature
measured over the history of satellite temperature measurements from
1979.

The ocean temperature of the El Nino for December 2015 surpassed the
highest temperature for the 1998 super El Nino. Ocean cooling
started January 2016. What is in store for the rest of 2016
remains to be seen.

As seen for the 1998 El Nino, rapid cooling took place after the peak
temperature early 1998. This was caused by the El Nino turning
into the ocean cooling La Nina. Possibly the same temperature drop
may take place in the future for 2016. This remains to be seen.

The satellite temperature data shows a temperature rise since 1979 of
0.12 degree C. per decade; or 1.2 degrees per century which places the
earth's warming below the recommended limit on global warming of the
2015 Paris Climate Accord.

Data over thousands of years have shown approximate 500-year cycles of
planet warming and cooling. We are currently in the Current
Warming Period which commenced approximately 1850. This was
preceded by the Little Ice Age from approximately 1350 to 1850.
Thus continued global warming should be anticipated until after the
start of the 22 century.

Email from James H Rust, professor of nuclear engineering and policy advisor The Heartland Institute

This food shortage BS never stops

Greenies have been making false prophecies of food shortages for
years now. Even Hitler did it. And I have often rebutted them. In
brief: The world's internationally-traded food problem has for a long
time been glut; Warming would open up new agricultural land in
Canada and Russia; Warming should cause more evaporation from the
oceans, thus giving MORE rainfall, not less. A prediction of flood
might make some sense but a prediction of water shortage makes no sense
at all

The modelling crap below is a laugh a minute. If global
warming DID exist, it would be INCREASING food-crop yields. Plants
gobble up CO2. It is their basic food. And a warmer world would be a
wetter one -- again giving plants a boost. The increased level of CO2
now in the atmosphere has already benefited plant growth, with the greening of the Sahel the most vivid example of that

Aside
from Greenie folly and basic biology, however, there is China. China
was a food-importer under Mao and any Greenie wisehead would see that as
inevitable given that an area about the same as the contiguous United
States has to feed 1.3 billion people with primitive technology. Poop is
their main fertilizer.

But under capitalism China feeds the
world. It is a huge exporter of food and exports to most countries on
the globe. For instance: "By value, China is the world's No.1 exporter
of fruits and vegetables, and a major exporter of other food products
ranging from apple juice to garlic and sausage casings. Its agricultural
exports to the US surged to $US2.26 billion last year". And that quote
was from 2007!

And have another look at Russia. How many
people know how big Siberia is? It is roughly 5 milllion sq.
miles, compared to about 3 milion sq. miles for the continental
USA. It's BIG. So if warming opened up Southern Siberia to
agriculture, the potential for new food production would be enormous.

Politics
and economics are the main constraints on the food supply, nothing
else. Capitalism is its friend. Greenies are its enemy

At least half a million people will die in the year 2050 as a result of
the impact climate change will have on food production, according to
experts.

The stark forecast is expected to occur because of changes in diet and bodyweight from reduced crop productivity.

Most of these additional deaths will be in China, India, and other
low-income countries in the Pacific and Asia, but the effects on food
availability will also reach into richer countries.

Writing in The Lancet, Dr Marco Springmann from the Oxford Martin
Programme on the Future of Food at University of Oxford claimed climate
change could cut improvements in food availability by about a third by
2050.

This would lead to around 3.2 per cent less food being available for the average person.

In particular, this will include reductions in fruit, vegetables, and
red meat amounting to about 99kcal fewer calories per person per day.

These changes in food availability will also increase non-communicable
conditions such as heart disease, stroke, and cancer, said Dr
Springmann.

It's not all bad news, however.

The reduction in food availability is being predicted to cut
obesity-related deaths by 260,000, but even this is slightly less than
the 266,000 extra deaths predicted as a result of people being
underweight.

Springmann and colleagues used an agricultural economic model with data
on emission predictions and possible climate responses to evaluate the
effects on global food production, trade, and consumption for 2050.

The recent Fyfe et al. paper which repeatedly referred to a "warming
slowdown" in recent years was curious in its non-use of numbers.
The authors said that there was a slowdown but not by how much. By
slowdown they meant that the rate of warming was notably reduced but it
did not vanish altogether. Curiously for a scientific paper (and I
have read it right through) they made no attempt at quantifying exactly
how much warming went on during the "slowdown". They said there
was some but not how much. Instead they waffled about all the
natural events which could have caused the slowdown. So the paper
was just a reluctant admission that the numbers ran contrary to global
warming theory.

Graham Readfearn below has picked up that ball
and run with it. He is basically just re-running the paper in a
form suitable for a non-technical audience. It's all just a big
apology for failed prophecy. That they can't put a number on
how much warming there was in recent years is really rather amusing and
a big step backwards for them

Did global warming really slow down for a decade or so in the 2000s and does it really matter if it did?

New analysis written by a group of well regarded climate scientists
appeared in a journal a couple of weeks ago, arguing that global warming
did slowdown.

Those first two sentences are about as straightforward as this post
gets. So I suggest that you either get out now while you can or you
buckle in.

That’s because for us to understand this issue properly, we need more
context than you could shake a contextual stick at, we need to have a
bit of respect for the scientific process and we also need to embrace
some nuance – three things the public conversation on climate change
isn’t particularly known for.

We also need to ask the authors of the analysis some questions, which I’ve done (don’t you dare just scroll).

First, the analysis appeared in the journal Nature Climate Change and it
basically argued that between 2001 and 2014, the rate of global warming
slowed down a bit.

This is where we need our first injection of nuance. When we say “global
warming” what we’re actually talking about here are the air
temperatures which, as one of the authors told me, is a relatively
“fickle” measure of climate change.

The amount of heat going into the oceans, the rate of sea level rise and
the increasing heat extremes are more reliable or more relevant
measures.

The authors, led by Dr John Fyfe, of the University of Victoria in
British Columbia, wrote that some climate models over this period also
tended to overestimate the rate of warming at the surface.

The authors say this “slowdown” was caused by a combination of natural
ocean cycles, volcanoes going off, less energy coming from the sun and
changes in the amounts of tiny particles in the atmosphere, mainly from
industrial pollution.

Now, climate science denialists have welcomed the paper as a great big
serving of “I told you so” with smug sauce and an overbearing garnish of
self-satisfied rodomontade.

British climate science denier James Delingpole also delivered a pudding
of chilled vexatious abuse with lumpy custard (Delingpole attacked
“pause deniers” on the back of a paper that expressly says ‘we do not
believe that warming has ceased’).

So as is the norm, many of those commentators have either not read the
paper, have misinterpreted the paper, have cherry-picked the bits of the
paper that they like, ignored context or failed to ask the authors the
most simple follow-up questions.

What’s more, the analysis is extremely unlikely to be the final word on
the matter in the peer reviewed literature. Criticism of the statistical
methods and choices used in the paper has already begun to surface, and
you can be confident there will be more to come.

Two previous papers in particular have argued that statistically and practically, the slowdown didn’t happen.

In the journal Science in June 2015, Thomas Karl and colleagues from the
US government’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
argued the slowdown was an “illusion”.

Once biases in the data were corrected, mainly concerning ocean
temperature readings taken by ships, the slowdown disappeared, the paper
said

Research published in the journal Scientific Reports and led by the
University of Bristol’s Stephan Lewandowsky also argued any so-called
“hiatus” did not exist in the context of longer-term trends (17 years or
more). Both these papers are discussed in the latest analysis.

So the most obvious question for the authors of this latest analysis is,
what does this actually mean for long-term projections of climate
change, especially if we keep loading the atmosphere with greenhouse gas
emissions from burning fossil fuels?

Dr John Fyfe, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, told me:

Climate models did not generally simulate the
slowdown because the slowdown was mainly due to random internal
variability. As for policy makers, they should be aware that once the
recent phase of internal variability flips – which we think is about now
– global surface temperatures will rapidly rise.

It would be very wrong to interpret our paper as
suggesting that global warming has stopped. Our findings show that the
rate of human-caused warming over the early-2000s was about the same as
before.

However, over the early 2000s human-caused warming
was masked by a cooling influence from internal variability combined
with cooling from a sequence of small volcanic eruptions.

In an interview with me last year another of the authors, Prof Michael
Mann, described the period of an alleged slowdown as the “faux pause”,
saying that “global warming hasn’t stopped, even though you still hear
those contrarian talking points.”

Mann told me he had not changed his mind and the distinction between
global warming stopping or experiencing a temporary slowdown was
“critical”.

Moreover, the slowdown is now very likely over. It
was at most a temporary respite, and as we have argued in our other
recent work there is a good chance we will now see the flipside.

Internal variability will begin to work against us,
and lead to even faster warming in the decade ahead. The Faux Pause may
have led to False Complacency, when it comes to climate change

All this talk of a “slowdown” period, remember, overlaps a period when
we saw 14 of the 16 hottest years on record all happening since 2000.

Prof Matt England, of the University of New South Wales climate change
research centre, another co-author on the analysis, told me:

The last thing we want out there is confusion in the
community about what this all means. None of this calls into question
the rate of global warming.

People need to understand that long-term projections are not affected in any way by decadal variability.

This is a very important point. This is only the
global average surface temperature and it’s only one measure of the
climate system – and it’s a very fickle measure.

What I mean by that is that it bounces around from
year to year. People don’t wake up and say ‘oh gee, that global average
air temperature that’s gone up by point zero one of degree from last
year has really affected my life’.

They are instead affected by extreme temperature
change, sea level rise and all those other metrics that really matter to
society. There’s an over-emphasis on the surface air temperature.

In the earlier 20th century there has been no
slowdown at all in the instances of extremes. We are really exposed to
these events and they have been on the rise.

Global warming in terms of the net energy in the
system has continued unabated. It’s important to point out to people
that there was no pause at all in global warming when you measure it as
the world’s climate system. If you look at ocean heat content, that’s
gone up almost monotonically.

So really this slowdown has been a real distraction
for action on climate change. But the mere fact that there are
scientists looking at the record is a normal scientific debate.

We are still sucking energy into system that goes
into melting ice and sea level rise and that’s why it’s a false pause.

After Admitting He Has No Evidence about Dimock and fracking, Tony Ingraffea Hides and Runs

By Phelim McAleer

Professor Tony Ingraffea has never been shy about speaking to the press
about fracking. He has been in both Gasland documentaries, given
hundreds of press interviews, and spoke at rallies with anti-fracking
celebrities Mark Ruffalo, Sean Lennon, and Yoko Ono.

But over the past few days, his advocacy has come back to haunt him and
left him literally hiding and running away when it comes to answering
difficult questions.

It has been a rough few days for Professor Ingraffea, the anti-fracking
movement’s favorite scientist. Finally, he was under oath and had to
tell the truth. When he didn't, he had to face his lies being exposed.
He was giving evidence in the Dimock Water Trial where the Hubert and
Ely families from Pennsylvania are accusing Cabot Oil and Gas of
polluting their water during fracking.

Under skillful cross-examination, Professor Ingraffea was forced to
admit that he's an anti-fracking and anti-fossil fuel "advocate." He
denied being an activist, but his face fell when lawyers for Cabot asked
to show the jury photographs of him speaking in front of anti-fracking
signs and participating in an Artists Against Fracking press conference
alongside Ruffalo, Lennon, and Ono.

Even the lawyer for the families, Leslie Lewis, blurted out in open court that she "wasn't thrilled" that the photos existed.

But the hits to Professor Ingraffea's credibility kept coming. He
admitted that his theory contradicted the plaintiffs’ own timeline.
Under Ingraffea's theory, the "contamination" could only have started in
late 2008/early 2009 because that was when the gas drilling started;
however, the plaintiffs have stated repeatedly that their water
allegedly deteriorated in the summer of 2008 before the drilling
Ingraffea has been blaming for the past 8 years.

Then Ingraffea shockingly admitted that after eight years of claims and
multi-million dollar lawsuits, he had no proof that Cabot had
contaminated any water in Dimock.

So yesterday, after he finished giving evidence, he was outside the
courthouse. I decided to ask Professor Ingraffea some difficult
questions. Suddenly the professor, possibly for the first time since he
became a prominent anti-fracking activist advocate, didn’t want to talk
to the press. In fact, he wanted to hide--behind a woman's coat.

I wanted to know if, after admitting under oath that he had no evidence
to back up his claims that Dimock's water was contaminated, he would now
take the opportunity to apologize to the people of Dimock. He didn't.
He ran away.

It's sad that people such as Professor Ingraffea can make so many
damaging claims, scaring people, telling them their water is poisoned,
and all these years later admit in a court that he never had any
evidence to back up his scaremongering.

For an industry with its own problems, the oil industry sure is eating
the green industry for lunch. For a little over a year now, the price of
oil has skimmed at a low $30 a barrel, making everything from gasoline
to plastic manufacturing cheaper than it has in a while. The development
of fracking brought this about. It was a development the government nor
the investors of Tesla anticipated. Government poured subsidy after
subsidy into solar energy, ethanol, etc., in preparation of the day when
the price of oil would climb higher than an oil geyser. But that day
won’t come for a while, and Tesla is left with an electric car that only
makes economic sense to drive if a barrel of oil goes for $350 a
barrel, according to an editorial by Investor’s Business Daily.

If the United States was a completely free market, it would quickly
correct itself. But because the government wanted to incubate the
fledgling green energy industries, Americans are left on the hook, both
as taxpayers and consumers. Investor’s Business Daily’s editorial board
writes, “The Institute for Energy Research points out that electricity
costs have been rising about 3% per year, even as the prices of coal and
natural gas (which provide about 70% of our electricity) have been
falling. The reason for the discrepancy is that electricity production
from wind and solar power are two to three times more expensive.”

Meanwhile the recycling industry, which sorts plastics, papers and
aluminum cans and sells the products back to manufacturers, also finds
itself struggling in a commodities market where it’s cheaper to use pure
products in manufacturing than reuse a city’s waste. The oil industry
has steadily lost jobs in 2015, but it has also opened up the
possibility that we will have enough oil to last decades, even centuries
— and regulators are left behind.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

3 March, 2016

MIT fossil fuel protesters settle in for long haul

This is just a self-righteousness display entered into to get praise
from their equally ignorant peers. It's a sort of party.
There is of course no way that getting their demands met would affect
climate. What it would affect is the funding of their
college. The price of coal sttocks on the stockmarket is way down
so MIT would get only pennies if they sold up. If they hang on to
their stocks, however, they will at least get some dividends. And
energy companies could well be miffed enough to cease coming to MIT with
research grants for projects that interest them. So MIT is
resisting a sell-off for good budgetary reasons. But the Green/Left like
to impoverish anyone they can so it all fits. Students who attack
their own college should have their enrollment cancelled

They have become a familiar sight lining the wide hallway outside the
stately second-floor offices of MIT president L. Rafael Reif.

For the past 116 days, students, professors, and alumni who are pressing
the college to shed fossil fuels from its investment holdings have been
calmly occupying this slick, hard stretch of the Infinite Corridor.

By all accounts, it is a very MIT protest. Students coordinate shifts
with a shared spreadsheet; they bring textbooks and doctoral theses; and
a computer program reminds them to stand and stretch every 30 minutes.

Oh, and they don’t plan to give up.

For 116 days, students, professors, and alumni have been holding a
sit-in to press MIT to shed fossil fuels from its investment holdings.

“When we do something at MIT, we do it thoroughly,” said Nina Lytton, a
1984 graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management who comes every day
and passes the time knitting. She has finished 62 furry Hawaiian leis so
far.

Organizers believe this is the longest-running divestment sit-in for a
college, breaking Swarthmore College students’ 32-day record several
months ago. That Pennsylvania protest was one of the many divestment
campaigns that erupted across the world last year, including at Harvard
University.

The group organizing the protest at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Fossil Free MIT, has asked that the school divest its
endowment from coal and tar sands and make the campus carbon neutral by
2040. It is also pressing for the institute to create an ethics advisory
council to combat “disinformation” about climate change.

The school in October released its five-year plan to confront climate
change, which did not include divestment. Reif said maintaining the
institute’s ties with oil and energy companies, who fund research at
MIT, is a more effective way to tackle the problem.

Fossil Free MIT members began meeting with administrators just a few
days after the sit-in began Oct. 22 and think they might be close to an
agreement for more action by the college.

Until then, they’re enjoying camaraderie and the quiet exhilaration that has come from making a stir.

By now, administrators and secretaries know them well.

“Hey Karla,” one student said Friday as Karla Casey, Reif’s executive
assistant, passed by. Casey waved back and smiled. One day, an
administrator brought them scones.

Across from the door Casey carefully shut behind her, graduate student
Michael DeMarco sat on a yoga mat as yellow pieces of paper, dotted with
equations, escaped his stack of legal pads.

“You sort of wish that you didn’t need to be here,” said DeMarco, who
studies physics. He brought along a computer, two textbooks, and a
binder.

Usually, DeMarco sits the night shift, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. In the
evening, employees are relaxed, he said.They ask how his day was, he
asks what they’re doing with their kids that weekend. It’s all genuine,
but it’s also part of the strategy.

“We develop the more mundane relationships that are crucial for bridging the gaps,” DeMarco said.

The administration did not respond to a request for comment about the negotiations.

Osama bin Laden wrote a letter calling on the American people to help
President Barack Obama fight 'catastrophic' climate change and 'save
humanity', newly released documents show.

The letter was among materials that were seized in the May 2, 2011, U.S.
raid on bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan that killed the al Qaeda chief
and which were released on Tuesday by the Obama administration.

The undated, unsigned letter 'to the American people,' which U.S.
intelligence officials attributed to bin Laden, appeared to have been
written shortly after Obama began his first term in 2009, based on the
letter's references to events.

Bin Laden's preoccupation with climate change also emerged as a theme in
the first tranche of documents from the raid that was declassified in
May 2015, as well as in an audio recording released via the al Jazeera
network in January 2010.

In the rambling letter made public Tuesday, bin Laden blamed the 2007-8
U.S. financial crisis on corporate control of capital and corporate
lobbyists, and the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He called on Americans to launch 'a great revolution for freedom' to liberate the U.S. president from those influences.

That would enable Obama to make 'a rational decision to save humanity
from the harmful gases that threaten its destiny,' bin Laden continued.

In a separate letter, bin Laden urged a close aide to launch a media
campaign for the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks
that included a call for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. President, you owe America an apology. We did drill our way to $2 gas

“We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices,” President Obama told an audience four years ago at the University of Miami.

Like this year, it was an election year and Obama was running for
re-election. Later in his speech, he added: “anybody who tells you that
we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re
talking about, or just isn’t telling you the truth.” He scoffed at the
Republicans for believing that drilling would result in $2 gasoline —
remember this was when prices at the pump, in many places, spiked to
more than $4 a gallon: “You can bet that since it is an election year,
they’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas. I’ll
save you the suspense: Step one is drill, step two is drill, step three
is drill.”

Well, Mr. President, you owe America, and the Republicans, an apology.
Your snarky comments were wrong. The Republican’s supposed three-point
plan, which you mocked, was correct.

I don’t expect our presidents to be energy experts, but they should be
advised by the brightest minds in the business. Obviously, Obama
surrounds himself with ideologues.

Today, on the four-year anniversary of another of Obama’s inaccurate
predictions, we have drilled our way to $2 gas — despite the fact that
he has supported the anti-fossil-fuel movement’s efforts to impede and
block oil production. In fact, due to American ingenuity and initiative
that successfully combined horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing,
we are producing so much it has resulted in a global glut of oil and a
national average gasoline price of $1.70. According to AAA, the cost per
gallon has been below $2 for 25 days.

In his message in Miami, he bragged: “under my administration, America
is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.”
Yes, that is true. But it is not because of Obama’s support. A
Congressional Research Service report released last year found that
since fiscal year 2010 oil production on federal lands is down by 10
percent, while it up 89 percent on state and private lands. Obama aligns
himself with those who want to “keep it in the ground” — who count his
“no” decision on the Keystone pipeline as their biggest victory to date.

Funny, in the 2012 speech he said: “Over the last three years, my
administration has approved dozens of new pipelines, including from
Canada.” That was then.

He then launched into his requisite rhetoric on renewables: “The United
States consumes more than a fifth of the world’s oil. But we only have 2
percent of the world’s oil reserves. That means we can’t just rely on
fossil fuels from the last century. … Because of investments we’ve made,
the use of clean renewable energy in this country has nearly doubled. …
As long as I’m President, I will not walk away from the promise of
clean energy. I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to
China.”

Wait! Wind and solar do not reduce our need for foreign oil. Wind
turbines and solar panels do produce electricity — albeit ineffectively,
inefficiently and uneconomically. But we do not have an electricity
shortage. We do not import electricity. We do not make electricity from
oil. Automobiles run on gasoline made from oil — for which the
president’s new budget includes a $10 a barrel tax that translates to
about 24 cents per gallon.

Four years ago, in Miami, he said: “…high gas prices are like a tax”
straight out everyone’s paycheck. Yet today, he wants to increase the
nearly $.45 a gallon we currently pay in taxes to $.69.

Obama’s false “We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices”
prediction was made during an election year. During this election year,
is a good time to be reminded that, without government “investment,” we
did drill our way to lower gas prices. At the same time,
taxpayer-supported renewable projects continue to go bankrupt and be
shuttered — taking with them our money and the jobs they promised to
create.

What the Defeat of a Wind Energy Project Means for Harry Reid’s Hometown

Grassroots conservationists and property rights activists in Nevada
stand poised to secure an unprecedented legal victory over
government-backed wind energy proponents that could reverberate across
state lines.

If they prevail, they will have handed a rare defeat to the U.S. Senate’s top Democrat, Harry Reid, in his hometown.

A federal District Court judge ruled against the development of an
87-turbine, 200-megawatt wind farm in tiny Searchlight, Nev., and the
company behind the project joined with the U.S. Interior Department to
file an appeal.

The case, which now sits before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, could stretch out for at least another year.

Even so, the Searchlight Wind Energy Project, as it is officially known, appears to be stalled permanently.

If the court decision in October had gone the other way, it would have
provided the federal government with the legal “right of way” to press
ahead with installing wind turbines that would cut across almost 19,000
acres of public lands.

“For at least the time being, the District Court ruling means that
people in Searchlight can continue to enjoy the spectacular mountain
views they presently have, and can avoid the dust storms that follow
when large areas of the desert are stripped of vegetation,” Judy
Bundorf, one of the town residents who filed suit against the project,
says.

Searchlight, a former gold mining center in Clark County, is perhaps
best known today as the birthplace of Reid, now Senate minority leader
and one of the Democrats’ leading national advocates of green energy.

Searchlight is part of the southern tip of Nevada, about 58 miles south of Las Vegas.

Bundorf and others filed suit to halt the Searchlight Wind Energy
Project in an effort to preserve the bucolic desert regions in and
around their community.

Bundorf’s home in the town of under 600 residents is about a mile from
where wind turbines as tall as 428 feet were to be located. But the
court ruling is a much bigger victory, she says in an interview with The
Daily Signal.

Americans across the country, Bundorf says, confront “well-connected
special interests and their allies in government” such as Reid, who
favor “inefficient and expensive renewable energy plans” that “degrade
and burden the environment.”

The fact that District Judge Miranda Du decisively vacated the Interior
Department’s March 2013 “record of decision” on the Searchlight wind
project while also rejecting Interior’s environmental impact and
biological conclusions could set a legal precedent for future renewable
energy initiatives, Bundorf and other plaintiffs suggest.

In her ruling, Du concluded that the Bureau of Land Management and U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Services, both divisions of the Interior Department,
produced a flawed analysis of the likely impact of the wind turbines on
wildlife such as golden eagles, desert tortoises, and bats.

Du found “analytical gaps” in the Final Environmental Impact Statement
and Biological Opinion that she said the agencies must rectify.

“One issue that was never addressed was the potential for people getting
valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis,” Bundorf tells The Daily Signal.
“This is a fungal infection that is not uncommon when the desert crust
is destroyed by grading. The spores are carried by the wind, and the
infection can be fatal to elderly people or people with compromised
immune systems.”

Bundorf, who is married but has no children, cites the “thousands of
boaters, fishermen, hikers, and campers” who visit the area,
particularly those who travel in and around Cottonwood Cove on Lake
Mohave, just 14 miles east of Searchlight.

The turbines were set to be erected on both sides of the road for much
of the distance to the lake, she says. In addition, a large electrical
substation would have to be built adjacent to the entrance to Lake Mead
National Recreation Area and, along the road, an operations and
maintenance building with laydown yard for storing heavy equipment.

“People come to the desert to enjoy the solitude, not to drive through a
heavy industrial zone to get to their destination,” Bundorf says.

Reid, the Searchlight native who had been a vocal supporter of the wind
energy project, has gone silent on it since the October court ruling.

Water is essential for all life, and happily it is abundant on our blue watery planet.

However, salty oceans cover 70% of Earth’s surface and contain 97% of
Earth’s water. Salt water is great for ocean dwellers but not directly
useful for most life on land. Another 2% of Earth’s water is tied up in
ice caps, glaciers and permanent snow, leaving just 1% as land-based
fresh water.

To sustain life on land, we need to conserve and make good use of this rare and elusive resource.

Luckily, our sun is a powerful nuclear-powered desalinisation plant.
Every day, solar energy evaporates huge quantities of fresh water from
the oceans. After a stop-off in the atmosphere, most of this water
vapour is soon returned to earth as dew, rain, hail and snow – this is
the great water cycle. Unfortunately about 70% of this precipitation
falls directly back into the oceans and some is captured in frozen
wastelands.

Much of the water that falls on land is collected in gullies, creeks and
rivers and driven relentlessly by gravity back to the sea by the
shortest possible route. Allowing this loss to happen is poor water
management. The oceans are not short of water.

Some animals and plants have evolved techniques to maximise conservation of precious fresh water.

Some Australian frogs, on finding their water holes evaporating, will
inflate their stomachs with water then bury themselves in a moist
mud-walled cocoon to wait for the drought to break. Water buffalo and
wild pigs make mud wallows to retain water in their private mud-baths,
camels carry their own water supply and beavers build lots of dams.

Some plants have also evolved water saving techniques – bottle trees and
desert cacti are filled with water, thirsty humans can even get a drink
from the roots and trunks of some eucalypts and many plants produce
drought/fire resistant seeds.

Every such natural water conservation or drought-proofing behaviour brings benefits for all surrounding plants and animals.

People have long recognised the importance of conserving fresh water –
early settlers built their homes near the best waterholes on the creek
and every homestead and shed had its corrugated iron tanks. Graziers
built dams and weirs to retain surface water for stock (and
fence-crashing wildlife), used contour ripping and good pasture
management to retain moisture in soils, and drilled bores to get
underground water. And sensible rules have evolved to protect the water
rights of down-stream residents.

Rainfall is often a boom and bust affair. Much fresh water is delivered
to the land surface suddenly in cyclones, storms and rain depressions.
But “The Wet” is always followed by “The Dry”, and droughts and floods
are normal climatic events. People who fail to store some of the flood
must put up with the drought.

Greens should learn from the beavers. Strings of dams can moderate flood
risk, as well as creating drought sanctuaries and secure water for
graziers, towns, irrigators and wildlife. Modern cities could not
survive without large water storages for drinking water, sanitation,
gardens and factories.

Fresh water is also necessary to produce fresh food. We can have fresh
milk, butter, cheese, meat, vegetables, nuts and fruit; or we can
irrigate the oceans and import fresh food from more sensible countries.
And without fresh water and fresh food, there will be no local food
processing.

Those infected with the green religion believe we should waste our fresh
water by allowing it all to return as quickly as possible to the salty
seas. They fight to protect beaver dams and natural lakes, but
persistently oppose human dams and lakes. Some even want existing dams
destroyed, while wasting billions on energy-hungry desalination and
sewerage re-treated plants, pumps and pipelines.

They also want to prohibit man’s production of two drought-defying
atmospheric gases, both released by the burning of hydrocarbons – carbon
dioxide which makes plants more drought tolerant, and water vapour
which feeds the clouds and the rain.

Green water policies are un-sustainable, even suicidal.

Humans must copy the beavers and “Build more Dams”. And help the biosphere by burning more hydrocarbons.

This is utter rubbish. Bleaching events are poorly understood
but one thing we know is that they are NOT a response to warmer
water. Corals are at their most prolific in Torres strait, the
part of Australia nearest to the equator, and hence the warmest East
coast waters. And in any case even NOAA's "adjusted" figures
showed only 13 hundredths of one degree global temperature rise in
2015

Fears of a mass coral bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef have
prompted federal authorities to issue an urgent warning on the natural
wonder, which is *under threat from climate change*.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority on Tuesday said patchy
bleaching had been detected on multiple reefs in mainly shallow areas,
and weather forecasts of upcoming hot conditions posed a dangerous
threat over the next few weeks.

In a statement, the authority said the conditions had triggered "level
one incident response" involving more in-water field surveys and
monitoring by authorities and researchers.

Climate action advocacy group 350.org said the bleaching was "tragic"
and the Turnbull government should block what would be Australia's
largest coal mine, by Indian mining giant Adani, and commit to halting
new fossil fuel projects nationally.

The authority said the bleaching had occurred in mainly shallow areas where corals are often exposed to high levels of sunlight.
Chairman Russell Reichelt said February and March were the highest risk
periods for mass coral bleaching on the reef because of hot, dry El Nino
conditions and high sea surface temperatures, adding "the next few
weeks will be critical".

"Bleaching is a clear signal that living corals are under physiological
stress. If that stress is bad enough for long enough, the corals can
die. Corals generally have a temperature limit, and the bleaching
indicates they're outside of their comfort zone," Dr Reichelt said.

"At this stage, there appears to be low rates of coral mortality
restricted to a small number of reefs, and most of the corals affected
by bleaching are those that are particularly vulnerable to this type of
event such as plate and branching corals."

The authority says the most common cause of coral bleaching is sustained
heat stress, which is occurring more frequently as the climate changes.

Dr Reichelt said the Bureau of Meteorology and the United States'
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had forecast a high
probability of heat stress that would cause further bleaching.

While sea surface temperatures were fluctuating across the 345,000
square kilometre marine park, in some areas they had reached 2.5 degrees
above the summer average, which was exacerbated by lack of cloud cover,
he said.

"What happens now will be entirely dependent on local weather
conditions. If we're fortunate enough to receive plenty of cloud cover,
which will effectively provide shade, it will go a long way to reducing
heat absorption by the ocean and alleviating thermal stress on corals,"
he said.

Dr Reichelt said the bleaching event was less severe than that which has
occurred across the Pacific during the current global bleaching event.
The authority says past bleaching events show coral reefs can recover if
thermal stress does not last for prolonged periods.

If mass bleaching does occur, the authority would study its extent and
impacts, alongside coral reef scientists from the Australian Institute
of Marine Science, James Cook University, the University of Queensland
and the CSIRO.

Blair Palese, chief executive of 350.org said the "tragic coral
bleaching" showed coal and gas were "warming the planet and destroying
the places we love most".

The authority says bleaching occurs when stress causes corals to expel
tiny marine algae called zooxanthellae, which live inside their tissue
and provide corals with much of their food and colour.
Without zooxanthellae, the coral tissue appears transparent, revealing the coral's bright white skeleton.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

So last night was the Oscars and, as expected, Leo DiCaprio won the best
actor award and, as expected, he took time during his acceptance speech
to discuss climate change. Now Canadians are aware of how knowledgeable
Leo is on weather-related topic following his laughable outburst last
year when he informed the world that a run-of-the-mill winter Chinook
was something that had never happened before. Last night was no
exception when he exclaimed “our production needed to move to the
southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow.”

For folks not familiar with Alberta weather, a Chinook is a warm
wind that can roll in from the west and change the temperature by up to
30 degrees Celsius in four hours. Winter Chinooks are common with
written records of them going back as far as 1877.

Now anyone familiar with the climate statistics for southern
Alberta (let’s use Calgary as an example) will notice a trend in
Alberta weather. Alberta winters tend to be pretty darn cold and can be
pretty darn dry. In particular, come late January and into February the
precipitation goes way down. So if it is late January and you have just
had a Chinook run through that melted your snow, you may go for several
weeks until a storm system comes through to give you new snow. It is
still cold as hell, but there simply isn’t any precipitation. Thus, when
a “dramatic” event melted the snow that late January, it probably made a
lot of sense to head somewhere else since apparently the production
company was unwilling to wait until the late season snows of March and
April returned the conditions to a white backdrop suitable for filming.

Now Albertans understand this and so when Dr. Michael Mann posted a comment about the Oscars:

One of the few people not blocked by Dr. Mann, a gentleman by the name
of Dr. Andrew Leach, had the temerity to point out that Mr. DiCaprio was
mistaken and that the weather after that year’s Chinook was actually
quite cold.

Needless to say Dr. Mann decided to Mannsplain Dr. Leach and then insult him

and then, not surprisingly, he decided to block Dr. Leach.

When it was pointed out to Dr. Mann who he had blocked Dr. Mann, the
person who had just called the man a “troll”, subsequently complained
that Dr. Leach was often “irritating/rude on social media”.

Pot meet kettle.

Now many folks have been blocked by Dr. Mann, (myself included) , that
is not a big deal. What is a big deal is that Dr. Mann managed to
alienate a potential ally. You see, Dr. Leach isn’t just another
anonymous commenter on Twitter, Dr. Leach was the Chair of the Province
of Alberta’s Climate Change Advisory Panel.

Dr. Leach and his panel produced the Climate Leadership Report (caution
large .pdf file) that served as the basis for the Alberta Climate
Leadership Plan. Dr. Leach and his panel spent three months of their
lives travelling the province doing the consultation necessary to build
up the technical support and political and social goodwill necessary to
enact the policy.

Besides Premier Notley, Dr. Leach is likely the most important reason
Alberta is creating a program to put a price on carbon to fight climate
change. Can you imagine a more important ally if you are trying to build
a consensus for a change in climate policy across North America than
the man who helped convince Alberta that it needed to control its carbon
emissions?

Turning Dr. Leach into your friend should be a no-brainer for climate
activists and a couple polite words is all it would have taken to smooth
the waters. Instead, out comes the insults and then the block and
another potential ally is stomped. Gotta love the climate crew, they
pull out their shotguns at the drop of a hat; proceed to point them
directly at their own feet; and then let go with both barrels.

Going back to Leo for a moment, I really don’t understand why so many in
the climate change community lionize the man? Here is a man whose
opulent lifestyle, love of private jets and carbon profligacy
should get him scorned by these same activists. Instead he says the
right things every now and again and he is cast as their champion?

This morning I had a fascinating exchange with Vox writer David Roberts
on the topic. Mr. Roberts is a solid writer who, along with Brad Plumer,
have written some of the smartest, data-driven pieces on climate change
to appear in the mainstream media but on the topic of Leo he has a huge
blind-spot and this morning he was taking on all comers:

As you can see, the basis for his support of Mr. DiCaprio appears to be
that as long as he says the right things in interviews and speeches,
then everything he does in his private life should be ignored. I, of
course, disagree because unlike most of us Leo flaunts his “private
life” for all to see and what we have seen shows his behaviour to be at
odds with his words. Our exchange was brief with Mr. Roberts ending with
a drive-by insult and then he was off.

What was more interesting was watching Mr. Roberts explaining to climate
change activists in Alberta why they should ignore both what Mr.
DiCaprio has said and done because only a handful of people would notice
the error.

The funny thing is this was all derived from a CBC article on the topic.

I’m not sure how familiar Mr. Roberts is with Canadian politics but when
you are a progressive and you lose the CBC you have lost whatever
battle you were trying to fight. Moreover, as Mr. Turner was trying to
explain, Alberta activists tend to care when Leo spews his ignorance on
one topic because it has a way of tainting his arguments on every other
topic. How can anyone take seriously an activist who, a year after being
corrected on the topic of Chinooks, is still making the same ridiculous
statements? For activists in Alberta Leo is simply poisoning the well
and will make their lives immeasurably harder.

I don’t want to go on too long tonight, but I simply wanted to ask the activists out there a simple question:

Why are you making it so hard on yourselves?

Outside of your progressive enclaves there are a lot of people who still
need to be convinced about the importance of action and you are not
making it easier. How hard would it have been for Dr. Mann to simply
have been be civil to an esteemed colleague? A colleague with a lot more
green cred than Dr. Mann himself in much of Canada.

Regarding Mr. DiCaprio, why are so many activists lionizing a man who’s
carbon footprint really does make him a one-percenter in the field? Sure
he has said some nice things but his actions don’t appear to back up
his words. There are so many really deserving people out there to carry
the flag and instead you rely on celebrities and celebrity-scientists?
That is probably why in a recent major study only 44% of Canadians
believed that humans were the primary cause of climate change? You
guys have had 25 years doing this and you can’t even convince half of
Canadians that humans as the primary cause of climate change? Why do you
never learn from your mistakes because, as the polls clearly indicate,
your opponents certainly do.

Yesterday it was still February, but the high temperature hit 64 degrees
here in Washington, with snow drifts still melting from last month’s
massive East Coast blizzard. So what are we to make of the weather and
the climate change controversy? Is it getting warmer or colder?

It’s not even a question worth asking, as far as the analysts at NASA
are concerned. Before the blizzard hit, they had already announced that
2015 was the hottest year on record. Not that this is anything new for
most Americans. We hear dire global warming proclamations on a
near-daily basis, and it’s always just been the hottest day, week, month
or year — no matter what the weather’s like outside.

Yet, as climate expert David Kreutzer recently pointed out, NASA is
fairly selective about which information you’re supposed to believe. The
agency’s own satellite data shows that while last year was indeed warm,
it wasn’t as warm as 2010 or 1998.

But wait, some may say. You can chalk up this discrepancy to the
difference between what the satellite data says and what the surface
temperatures are (which NASA gathers from thousands of sites worldwide,
with a few “adjustments” thrown in). But it doesn’t matter. Neither data
set supports the wild predictions being bandied about by global warming
alarmists.

Search all the data for evidence of the accelerated warming projected by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and you come up
empty-handed. Sometimes temperatures go up, but not always. There’s no
constant warming. Indeed, the data show a significant moderation of the
warming trend. At times it appears to have leveled off or even cooled a
bit.

Should we be surprised? Not really. When you throw in variables such as
measurement errors, as well as El Nino and La Nina, it makes sense that
the average temperature for some years will be higher even if the
overall trend is flat.

“Will the trend stay flat? Probably not,” Mr. Kreutzer writes. “The
Earth has been recovering from the Little Ice Age for a couple of
centuries and recovering from a real ice age for thousands of years. So
there is a reasonable chance that we will revert to an overall warming
trend, but there is no guarantee. Who knows? We might even be headed
into another ice age (as was predicted in the 1970s).”

None of this is to say that human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions
haven’t contributed to some warming. They likely have. But the bottom
line is that, one way or the other, there’s no reason to believe that
the sky is falling. Or, to be more exact, that the earth beneath it is
warming up to levels that should frighten us.

No data points to catastrophic warming, hysterical predications aside.
And, it should be noted, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show
that there have been no upward trends in hurricanes, tornadoes, floods
or droughts.

Small wonder then, that liberal groups who are vested in global warming
alarmism often ignore data that contradict their agenda. They tell us
repeatedly that the debate is over, as if there is an expiration date on
free speech. Unfortunately, too many in the media comply. Some outlets,
such as the Los Angeles Times, won’t even accept letters to the editor
that question the gospel of man-made climate change.

Hence we get very selective reporting. “For example, the national media
hyped NASA’s finding that 2014 was the hottest year on record,” writes
Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas. “Ignored was the footnote that
revealed that NASA was only 38 percent certain this was accurate. Less
than fifty-fifty. Americans would have been better served by a coin
toss.”

There’s a lot of hot air circulating, all right. Fortunately, it’s more
political than scientific. Leonardo DiCaprio may have been taken in, but
the rest of us can ignore the overheated rhetoric.

Reclaim the Power says it will use direct action at a dozen
international sites in May, including the UK’s largest opencast coal
mine in south Wales

The dozen international sites facing civil disobedience from the Break
Free 2016 campaign span the globe from the US to Australia and South
Africa to Indonesia.

The Ffos-y-fran opencast mine, near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, is about
halfway through extracting 11m tonnes of coal. Ellie Groves, from the
Reclaim the Power network, said: “The only way we can stop catastrophic
climate change is taking action to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

“The local community have battled Ffos-­y-­fran for nearly a decade and
now face the threat of a new mine next door at Nant Llesg,” said Groves.
“Enough is enough. We need a ban on opencast coal mining across Wales,
and the rest of the UK.”

Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel and scientists estimate that 80%
of current reserves must remain in the ground in order to avoid
dangerous climate change. The UK government intends to phase out coal
burning by 2025 but the International Energy Agency still forecasts
growth in the global demand for coal.

A statement from Reclaim the Power said: “Hundreds are expected to set
up camp nearby and take part in a mass action to close the mine. The
action will take place a few days before the Welsh assembly elections on
May 5.”

The Reclaim the Power network has held annual camps since 2013 and has
conducted a series of direct actions, including blockading a World Coal
Association conference and a fracking company. Ffos-y-fran supplies the
Aberthaw power station, whose illegally high levels of pollution have
led the EU to take the UK to court. Miller Argent, the company running
Ffos-y-fran, and the local Labour MP Gerald Jones both declined to
comment on the planned protests.

Campaign group 350.org, which had led the fossil fuel divestment
movement, is helping to coordinate the international actions. “We’re
mobilising to shut down the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel projects
and support the most ambitious climate solutions,” says the Break Free
2016 website.

“We want to ensure there continues to be momentum to keep fossil fuels
in the ground and to confront fossil fuel companies,” said Will Bates,
global campaigns director for 350.org.

Bates emphasised that, while involving civil disobedience, the protests
would be peaceful. “Our actions must reflect the scale and urgency of
this crisis,” says the website. The protests are likely to emulate a
protest in Germany in August 2015 which shut down the large Garzweiler
opencast coal mine for a day.

“We need to be disrupting business as usual if governments will not put
in place the policies that will get the job done,” said Bates. “It is
what is necessary. We think it is in everybody’s best interest.”

In the early days of global warming hysteria, the alarmists
understandably warned that warmer temperatures would cause, among other
things, less snow. Jim Steele reminds us:

"[Kevin] Trenberth’s 1999 paper framing the effects of global warming
on extreme precipitation declared, “With higher average temperatures in
winter expected, more precipitation is likely to fall in the form of
rain rather than snow, which will increase both soil moisture and run
off, as noted by the IPCC (1996) and found in many models.” The 2001
IPCC 3rd Assessment repeated those expectations stating, “Northern
Hemisphere snow cover, permafrost, and sea-ice extent are projected to
decrease further.” Soon climate scientists like Dr. Viner proffered
alarming scenarios that “children would no longer know what snow was”.
Similarly in 2008 politicians like RFK Jr. warned DC children would be
deprived of the fun of sledding due to global warming."

It all sounded plausible, but nature refused to cooperate:

"But our climate naturally oscillates and by early February of 2010
Snowmageddon was blanketing the USA’s eastern seaboard with record
snows, making global warming predictions the butt of many jokes. The
heavy snows didn’t disprove CO2 had caused any warming, but it
definitely highlighted failed predictions."

If the alarmists were scientists, they would acknowledge that a theory
that generates false predictions is wrong. But they aren’t doing
science, they are doing politics. So they retrospectively revised their
predictions. Any port in a storm:

"In 2011 Chris Mooney writing for the DeSmog blog noted heavy
snowfall had become a “communications nightmare” for global warming
theory and urged, “We need to move the public to a place where drawing a
warming-snowstorm connection isn’t so challenging”.

Good luck with that.

"Kevin Trenberth was already on point. Just two weeks after the 2010
Snowmageddon, Trenberth appeared in a NPR interview flip-flopping to a
new climate change framework in which a “Warming Planet Can Mean More
Snow”. Now he argued, “The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they
were, say, 30 years ago means there’s about on average 4 percent more
water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was, say, in the
1970s”. Thus “you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a
consequence of global warming,” A year later the Union of Concerned
Scientists held a press conference asserting global warming was no
longer causing less snow, but causing heavier snow. And now, every year
as heavy snowstorms approach, Trenberth and his well-groomed media
outlets bombard the public, urging them not to be misled by their
senses, but trust that cold and snowy days have worsened due to global
warming"

The alarmists’ new, improved global warming theory was that warmer
temperatures caused the atmosphere to be able to hold more moisture.
Therefore the total precipitable water vapor increases with CO2,
and–presto!–more water vapor means more snow. All earlier predictions
were conveniently forgotten.

There are several problems with this theory, including the fact that
total precipitable water vapor has not increased in parallel with
atmospheric CO2:

It is true that warmer temperatures allow the air to hold more water, so
the lack of any significant increase in TPW implies that the Earth
hasn’t been warming as required by the alarmists’ theories. Needless to
say, this isn’t the conclusion they draw. But as we all know,
consistency is not their strong point. Trenberth is famous for writing
privately to his political allies: “The fact is that we can’t account
for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we
can’t.”

The point of this amusing story is that for the alarmists, almost
everything is negotiable. More snow? Less snow? No problem! No matter
what happens, they tweak their models and pretend that they saw it
coming all along. There is only one constant, one fixed star amid the
models’ constant fluidity: the need for government control over the
world’s economies. This is why governments pay billions to the climate
alarmists, and are utterly indifferent to their laughable record of
failed predictions. Climate alarmism has nothing to do with science.

Our atmospheric scientists are predicting a dramatic change in high
altitude winds 50km above the ground and the imminent occurrence of an
event known as a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) in early March.

Professor Adam Scaife, Head of Monthly to Decadal Prediction explains:
“Sudden stratospheric warming events occur high up in the atmosphere and
involve a complete reversal of the high altitude polar jet stream –
they can even affect weather at the surface, and for the UK a sudden
stratospheric warming increases the risk of wintry weather.”

The phenomenon begins with a wave-like disturbance which travels up into
the high-altitude jet stream. Scaife said: “This disturbance can grow
to a point where it turns over and breaks, just like a wave on a beach.”

Normally the jet stream flows from west to east with some north and
south oscillation, but the force from this high altitude disturbance
pushes against the jet stream until the winds actually reverse and flow
from east to west instead. Air then falls into the Arctic and is
compressed so that it starts to warm: the temperature can rise by as
much as 50C in just a few days.

Professor Scaife added: “This reversal of high altitude winds can also
burrow down into the lower stratosphere. Once it is within reach of
weather systems in the lower atmosphere the Atlantic jet stream often
weakens and moves south. This allows cold air from the east into
northern Europe and the UK.”

Sudden stratospheric warming events occur on average every couple of
years and our long-range forecasts have consistently suggested an
increased risk of sudden stratospheric warming towards the end of this
winter. The last big event was in early 2013 and was followed by a cold
end to winter. Although the impact of the current event is unlikely to
be as severe, it increases the risk of cold north easterlies and wintry
weather for the UK over the next few weeks.

7 Reasons the Dimock Water Case Is Looking Very, Very Shaky as the Trial Enters Its Second Week

The Ely and Hubert families in Dimock, Pennsylvania are suing Cabot Oil
& Gas alleging they have polluted their water. In various court
filings and in countless documentaries and comments to journalists, the
Ely family have claimed fracking/drilling has destroyed their life,
damaged their health, and caused their children to be ill--serious
allegations. They attracted international publicity with anti-fracking
activists describing Dimock as the “ground zero” of fracking pollution.
But after eight years of allegations and one week of the trial, here are
seven reasons the the case looks very, very shaky.

1. Testing the Truth
The plaintiffs’ case was collapsing long before they entered the court
in Scranton. Their original complaint contained alarming allegations
that Cabot and fracking caused neurological, gastrointestinal, and
dermatological damage to the plaintiffs and their children. They also
claimed that a blood study showed results consistent with toxic exposure
to..heavy metals. But in the run up to the hearing, they failed to
produce ANY evidence to back up these claims. No doctor’s report, no
blood test, nothing. The evidence was so lacking that the judge
prevented them from even raising the possibility in the court that their
health was affected.

2. Legal Eagle
The plaintiffs’ lawyer is truly awful. Leslie Lewis is so bad that it’s
possible that she’s looking for a sympathy verdict from the jury. She is
disorganized, doesn't seem to understand the science, and constantly
tries to put words in witnesses’ mouths when she doesn't get the answer
she wants. She also has the habit of blurting out statements that damage
her clients’ case. It was Ms. Lewis who early in the case memorably and
unnecessarily told the jury that the central allegation of
anti-fracking activists across the planet had no scientific basis. There
was absolutely no evidence that fracking fluids had ever contaminated
Dimock's water. “We don't have proof of that. This is not about fracking
fluid appearing in the water. Hydraulic fracturing materials, we don't
have proof of that,” she told the jury.
But don't take my word for it. Ms. Lewis hasn't impressed the judge,
either. Judge Martin Carlson criticized her, stating that her attempts
to introduce an enormous amount of “evidence” at the last minute was
“extraordinary, unprecedented, unexplained and [a] profoundly troubling
development.”

3. McMansion
And her clients aren’t much better. It's difficult to know if the Ely
family are bad parents or bad liars or both. Despite claiming that they
and their children were suffering from a raft of medical conditions
after being poisoned by fracking fluids and other chemicals, the Elys
never, ever took their children to a doctor to discuss the
illnesses--not once. And the Elys are not unsophisticated people who
would not have had access to medical experts. Monica Ely is a dentist
who would have friends and colleagues who could help her access the best
tests and best experts available. But they didn't even bother having
their children tested--despite the fact that the Elys kept telling their
children and the world's media that they had been poisoned. In fact,
the Elys were so unconcerned with the state of their water on the
property that after they claimed it was poisoned they went ahead and
built a $1 million mansion on the property.

4. Superhuman
Scott Ely was a shifty and very unimpressive witness. But perhaps the
lowest moment was when he tried to fix a problematic timeline (that he
set up) but fatally undermined his credibility. Scott had told three
different people--a doctor, a hydrologist, and in a handwritten
statement to his own lawyer--that the water problems started in August
2008. However, his lawyer has also told the court that they all accept
drilling did not start on nearby gas wells until late September/October
2008. So on the witness stand, Scott suddenly remembered--eight years
after the case started--that in June/July 2008 he remembered a massive
gas leak at a gas well that he was claiming must have affected his
water.

“I pulled up on that location. The location was shut down. Gas was
spewing out of ground....It stunk like crazy everybody was evacuated
from the location....You can see the gas up around the rig,” he told the
jury. Except that he was then forced to admit that natural gas is
invisible and odorless. So the jury will have to believe Scott Ely has
superhuman powers, or they will have to assume that he is a dishonest
witness.

5. Mother of the Year
Monica Ely has been shown to be an extremely dodgy witness also.
Apart from neglecting to bring her children to the doctor--even though
she thought they had been poisoned by fracking--Ms Ely also portrayed
herself as someone who tried to shield her children from the politicking
and contentious debate around fracking. She testified that she tried
“not to involve our kids with this.” Then the Cabot lawyers pointed out
and produced photos (see above) that showed far from sheltering her
children Ms Ely had in fact “brought them to press conferences, rallies
with people like [actor] Mark Ruffalo, taken them to the Tribeca Film
festival,” and had allowed them to be featured in the highly contentious
documentary Gasland. Monica Ely: no time to take her children to the
doctor even though she thought they were poisoned but plenty of time to
take them to rallies with actors and activists.

6. Expert Witness
The the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses are pretty awful also. Hydrologist
Paul Rudin gave evidence on Friday where, after posing as a neutral
scientist, admitted that he had “come into this case with a bias against
non-renewable energy exploration.” That’s right. The first expert
witness the plaintiffs were able to produce admitted he was biased
against fossil fuels and fossil fuel companies. Science at its purest,
obviously.

7. Outsourcing
And Paul Rudin’s methodology is unorthodox to say the least. Despite
wanting to find out if Scott Ely's property was affected by gas
drilling, he did no tests on the property, but instead went to a quarry
2,700 ft away and concluded that was sufficient examination of the
property's geology. And in breach of every acceptable international
standard, he allowed Scott Ely to collect the water supplies that he
analyzed with no checks or attempts to ensure that the water was
collected properly.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

1 March, 2016

More harm done by the Green/Left

Tens of thousands of people are dying every year because repeated
warnings about the dangers of diesel cars and wood-burning for heating
were ignored by successive governments trying to make Britain ‘greener’,
The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Ironically, the policies have only made our air dirtier. They are
accused of triggering a ‘public health disaster’, with the huge shift to
diesel vehicles to try to cut greenhouse gas emissions denounced as a
‘con’.

Last week, a devastating official report said the drive for diesel and
wood-burning are directly responsible for needlessly high incidences of a
shocking list of conditions including diabetes, autism, lung cancer,
cardiovascular disease, learning difficulties, asthma, low birth weight
and kidney disease.

Professor Jonathan Grigg, vice chair of the report by the Royal College
of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health,
told this newspaper that the move to diesel vehicles in the mistaken
belief this would cut greenhouse gas emissions is having catastrophic
consequences.

The two worst types of pollution that diesel engines produce are
nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and tiny particles less than 2.5 microns in
diameter – called ‘PM 2.5’ particulates – that lodge deep in the lungs
and can even cross into the bloodstream.

Prof Grigg said NO2 and the particulates are produced by a range of
sources, which together are reducing the average life expectancy of
every man, woman and child by a shocking eight months and causing 40,000
to 50,000 early deaths each year. He said a substantial amount of that
pollution is caused by diesel and wood. Official figures show that
diesel cars and vans alone are currently responsible for about
two-thirds of roadside pollution.

‘This is a public health disaster,’ said Grigg, who is professor of
paediatric respiratory and environmental medicine at Queen Mary
University in London. ‘The tragedy is that people have bought diesel
cars thinking they are protecting the environment, whereas toxic
emissions from diesel engines are causing death and disease. It is
understandable that buyers now feel they were conned.’

Former Chancellor Gordon Brown cut vehicle excise duty for
fuel-efficient diesels in his 2000 budget. Since then the proportion of
cars sold that are diesel has surged from 14 per cent to more than 50
per cent, with 14 million now on the road.

Last week Labour MP Geraint Davies launched a Bill to give the
Environment Agency powers to curb diesel use in periods when the risk is
highest, saying that successive governments, Labour included, had
‘ignored the warnings’ because of their ‘over-focus’ on cutting carbon
dioxide (CO2) in the air.

He added: ‘Using diesel to combat climate change is no better – indeed,
it is arguably worse – than petrol, but we are passively smoking diesel
emissions that are costing £20 billion and 40,000 lives a year. Taxation
levels on diesel and petrol are on a par and do not reflect the cost to
the environment and to health.’

Meanwhile almost £400 million has been paid in subsidies to homes and
businesses which install ‘biomass’ wood-burning boilers under the
Government’s 2012 ‘renewable heat incentive’. These also emit large
quantities of PM 2.5 pollution. Experts say wood smoke is already
costing between 1,000 and 3,000 lives a year.

Prof Grigg said: ‘The idea that wood smoke pollution is somehow less
toxic than fossil fuel is simply not tenable. The warnings were always
there. But the narrative was, “We have to reduce CO2 in order to meet
our targets – and here are ways we can do it”.

As a result, the warnings were overwhelmed.’

Those warnings started as early as 1986, when lung expert Dr Robin
Russell-Jones, who successfully campaigned to remove toxic lead from
petrol, gave evidence to a House of Lords select committee that diesel
pollution was linked with asthma, cardiovascular disease and lung
cancer.

Three years later, Margaret Thatcher’s Government was starting to become
concerned about global warming. For the first time it considered
creating cash incentives for drivers to switch to diesel cars, on the
grounds that because they travelled more miles per gallon, their CO2
emissions would be lower.

Dr Russell-Jones wrote to Sir John Fairclough, her chief scientific
advisor, saying he had ‘read with amazement that the government is
thinking of introducing a tax break in favour of diesel fuel on the
grounds that it is environmentally friendly.’ This might be true so far
as global warming was concerned, he wrote, ‘but from every other point
of view it is a disaster.’

Diesel was ten times more carcinogenic than petrol, he added: ‘I only hope it is not too late to prevent this lunatic proposal.’

As Dr Russell-Jones pointed out yesterday, Mrs Thatcher had been a
scientist: ‘You could get through to her: perhaps that’s why the idea –
then – was dropped.’

The dangers were hammered home at the end of 1993 in a major report for
the Department of the Environment by an expert panel, the Quality of
Urban Air Review Group.

The report said that other policies, such as the ban on coal burning
introduced by the Clean Air Act, had been slowly reducing PM pollution.
If the proportion of diesels on the road stayed the same, then by 2005
the level of disease-causing particulates in the atmosphere would halve.
But if the proportion of diesels rose to 50 per cent then there would
be no reduction. Now the proportion of diesels is 50 per cent, that is
exactly what has happened.

The 1993 report laid out the consequences in stark terms: ‘Diesel
emissions are a potential health hazard. They contain compounds known to
be carcinogenic and may cause impairment of respiratory functions.
There is evidence that an increase in mortality and morbidity may be
associated with an increased concentration of particulates in urban
air.’

The 1993 report’s lead author, Prof Roy Harrison of Birmingham
University, revealed yesterday that in the closing years of John Major’s
government in 1996 and 1997, he sat on another committee that advised
Whitehall on diesels and the environment.

He said: ‘We recommended that because of the health issues around
diesel, instead of giving it tax breaks, duty on diesel fuel should be
increased relative to petrol. The Government responded by saying it
would be better to do this through vehicle duty. So when I discovered
that its successor had done the reverse by effectively cutting duty for
diesels, I was very concerned.’

The New Labour government decided to do that in the wake of a 1998 EU
directive, which compelled Britain to cut CO2 emissions from vehicles by
25 per cent by 2020.

The warnings continued. In 2002, the American Cancer Society issued a
major study suggesting diesels were so carcinogenic that, in the UK,
they could be expected to cause 4,000 cases of lung cancer a year.

Britain’s Medical Research Council had planned to say that diesels
caused a third of all lung cancers, but, according to reports at the
time, toned down its warning to say only that diesels were a ‘relatively
minor’ cause compared to smoking.

In 2007 came yet another major report. The Air Quality Expert Group
showed that the aim of cutting carbon emissions by boosting diesels
wasn’t working.

It said any gains were insignificant as diesel engines tended to bigger,
refining diesel led to high emissions, and the other toxic substances
pumped out from diesels’ exhaust pipes enhanced the fuel’s greenhouse
effect.

The new Royal Colleges’ report supports this, saying that Japanese petrol technology has reduced carbon far more effectively.

Yet still the damage continued. In 2009, the Labour Government set out
plans for what was to become the Renewable Heat Incentive subsidy for
wood burning boilers.

Amazingly, in a parliamentary answer, Energy Minister Jim Fitzpatrick
revealed that the Government’s own assessment showed this would cost
lives – between 240,000 and 1.75 million ‘person years’ would be lost
each year by 2020. Prof Harrison said yesterday that recent studies
suggest that wood smoke in the atmosphere is costing up to 3,000 lives a
year.

Working out exactly how many of the needless deaths due to pollution are
the direct result of policies designed to curb carbon dioxide is
difficult, but it is clear that their contribution is substantial.

Meanwhile, the new report’s conclusions are devastating: the air quality
crisis is a ‘major public health problem deserving of multiple measures
to drive down exposure in as many ways as possible… when our patients
are exposed to such a clear and avoidable cause of death and disability,
it is our duty as doctors to speak out’.

The American investor also dismissed the possibility climate change
could prove a large risk to the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. Berkshire
is one of the world's biggest property insurers and insurers against
catastrophic risks but given insurance policies are written for one year
and repriced upwards to reflect growing risks, climate change may
actually increase the firm's profitability.

"Worries might, in fact, be warranted if we wrote ten- or twenty-year
policies at fixed prices," says Mr Buffett, who points out climate
change has not produced more frequent weather-related events covered by
insurance.

"As a citizen, you may understandably find climate change keeping you up
nights," writes Mr buffett. "As a homeowner in a low-lying area, you
may wish to consider moving. But when you are thinking only as a
shareholder of a major insurer, climate change should not be on your
list of worries."

That said, the firm has poured $US16 billion into renewables in recent
years, and according to Mr Buffett, the company's electricity portfolio
now consists of 7 per cent wind and 6 per cent solar.

One of the greatest fictions ever perpetrated on the American people is
that liberals care about helping the poor. Indeed, they seem determined
to advance policies that limit opportunities created by economic
expansion and growth. The latest example of this can be seen in retail
giant Ikea's decision to cancel plans for a 366,500-square foot store
outside of Cleveland, due to environmental impact concerns. The store
has no plans to pursue other locations in the Cleveland area.

After investing more than a year of effort in preparing for the store,
Ikea chose to withdraw due to an anticipated rejection from the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers, charged with stewardship over the proposed
building site, which includes 15 acres of wetlands. The Clean Water Act
severely limits the private sector's ability to develop such land, as
Ikea is finding out to its cost.

In the midst of one of the weakest economic recoveries in U.S. history,
environmental concerns about the well-being of a patch of swamp (a
perfectly good word the left has abandoned in favor of the banal
euphemism "wetlands.") should take a backseat to the economic
development created by hugely successful companies like Ikea.

Cleveland's economy remains fragile, its crime rate high; any efforts to
grow the local economy should be met with open arms, not obstructed by
government bureaucrats more concerned with protecting the habitats of
potentially-deadly mosquitos than with helping actual human beings. It
pains me personally to see these lost jobs. I may not live in
Cleveland, but I still have Browns seasons tickets and love my hometown.

Meanwhile, Ikea employs more the 120,000 workers worldwide and stands as
one of retail's greatest success stories, contributing more than $33
billion to the U.S. economy. The chain is not only good for workers, but
for consumers as well, offering affordable furnishing options that
otherwise may not exist. In fact, while inflation is making many
consumer goods more expensive each year, Ikea has a history of lowering
its prices by 2 to 3 percent annually on account of its increased
efficiency.

This may seem like a small issue — after all, it's only one store — but
it reflects the deeper problem of the restrictive regulatory climate
gripping the whole country. In recent years, environmental regulators
have attempted to seize greater and greater control over private
property, the most egregious example being the expansive Waters of the
United States rule that would give the Environmental Protection Agency
jurisdiction over small ponds, gullies, ditches, and streams on
privately held land. Last year, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked
the rule, but that could easily change, especially given the recent
passing of Justice Scalia and the ensuing vacancy. Such environmental
overreach would add to the already $2 trillion cost of federal
regulations nationwide.

Human civilization has flourished due to millennia of people mixing
their labor with the land and building things; agriculture,
manufacturing, research facilities, yes, even the humble retailer,
raising the standard of living for consumers everywhere. Without these
things, the amount of progress we have made as a species in terms of
wealth, longevity, and knowledge would have been impossible.

Progressive squeamishness over mankind continuing to do as we have
always done, build, helps no one, least of all the citizens of
Cleveland. If we're truly interested in helping people succeed, instead
of training them to depend on handouts, we have to get government out of
the way and start building things again.

Next year, Ikea plans to open a store in Columbus, Ohio. When
Clevelanders see the benefits of economic development enjoyed by that
city, they will no doubt regret the missed opportunity to improve their
own community. Swamps may be pretty, but they don't employ people, don't
grow the economy, and are notoriously unreliable sources for flat-pack
furniture.

Typically there was little policy detail. But it was clear that the EPA –
and its $8bn budget – would be on the chopping block should the
Republican frontrunner become president.

“Environmental protection – we waste all of this money,” he said. “We’re
going to bring that back to the states. We are going to cut many of the
agencies, we will balance our budget and we will be dynamic again.”

The promise was an echo of recent statements from Trump on the EPA. He
has said there is “tremendous cutting” to be done because the EPA
“aren’t doing their job, they are making it impossible for our country
to compete”.

He has also accused the EPA of “going around causing damage as opposed
to saving damage”, leading to “a tremendous amounts of money, tremendous
fraud, tremendous abuse”.

Trump’s plan to dissolve the EPA and hand environmental protection
duties to the states goes further than his main rivals for the GOP
nomination, but anti-EPA sentiment appears to run deep in both Ted Cruz
and Marco Rubio.

Cruz has called the EPA a “radical” agency that has imposed “illegal”
limits on greenhouse gases from power plants. “I think states should
press back using every tool they have available,” the Texas senator has
said. “We’ve got to rein in a lawless executive that is abusing its
power.”

Rubio has said the EPA’s plan to curb emissions would have a
“devastating impact” on jobs; he has also vowed to scale back the Clean
Water Act.

“Regulations in this country are out of control, especially the Employment Prevention Agency, the EPA,” Rubio said in January.

Trump would appear to have some support for abolishing the EPA within
Congress – Iowa Republican senator Joni Ernst, for example, has said the
regulator should be scrapped because “the state knows best how to
protect resources”.

Scrapping the EPA, however, would cause an unravelling of basic
protections of air and water. Environmental law experts argue it would
also be difficult to achieve anyway.

The agency, formed in 1970 under Richard Nixon, is empowered to
administer federal standards under the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air
Act. It has also been responsible for controlling or banning chemicals
such as the pesticide DDT.

Robert Percival, director of the environmental law program at the
University of Maryland, said ditching the EPA was a “ridiculous idea”.

“It reflects a lack of understanding over the US legal system, you’d
have to fundamentally repeal or change all our environmental laws,” he
said.

Trump is demagoguing. It plays to the far-right base but it would have enormous consequences for people’s health

Robert Percival, University of Maryland

“The EPA sets national standards and then the states come up with a plan
on how to implement them. One reason this is done is to avoid a race to
the bottom, so that states don’t relax regulations over air or water to
attract industry.

“California could do a decent job maybe because it has such a large
environmental agency but smaller states wouldn’t be able to perform
those functions.

“Trump is demagoguing. It plays to the far-right base but it would have enormous consequences for people’s health.”

Supporters of the EPA point to evidence that the agency has helped save a
huge amount of money, as well as prevented many deaths. A 2012 study
estimated that the Clean Air Act alone has saved $22tn in healthcare
costs during its lifetime.

“The EPA pays for itself and our environmental laws have been enormously successful,” said Percival.

“We don’t have the environmental problems China does, with its smogs and
its polluted drinking water. China doesn’t have a centralized regulator
like theEPA, with 15,000 employees to enforce national standards. We’d
be setting ourselves up for an environmental disaster.”

EPA “overreach” has been a long-held bugbear of some Republicans, some
of whom believe the toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan, is evidence
that the agency is failing.

Congressional hearings into Flint are being used to put pressure on Gina
McCarthy, the EPA’s administrator. But the idea of shutting down the
entire agency may be a step too far for some Republicans.

Billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer has spent millions of dollars
trying to make climate change a major issue on the 2016 campaign trail.
But neither the candidates nor the voters seem to notice.

After one of the Democratic presidential debates, Mr. Steyer issued a
statement lamenting that the focus on climate change was “far too
brief.” Following a Republican debate, he expressed outrage that “not a
single Republican presidential candidate took this threat seriously,” to
which he added, “And that’s why not a single one of these candidates is
qualified to get anywhere near the Oval Office.”

To be fair, Mr. Steyer does appear to hold sway over the Democratic
presidential candidates. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have,
at Mr. Steyer’s insistence, pledged to achieve at least 50 percent
“clean” energy by 2030. Mr. Steyer, who has yet to throw his support
behind a candidate, appears to be dangling his wealth and endorsement
over the Democratic candidates to cajole them to do even more.

Just days before the New Hampshire primary, Mrs. Clinton was asked if
she would support banning the extraction of natural gas, oil, and coal
on public lands. “Yeah, that’s a done deal,” was her reply. Clarifying
her position to another activist, she said, “No future extraction. I
agree with that.” Similarly, Mr. Sanders has co-sponsored legislation in
the Senate that would block the development of these resources on
federal lands. According to a recent study commissioned by the Institute
for Energy Research, of which I am president, these “keep it in the
ground” proposals would forgo millions of jobs, trillions of dollars in
higher wages, and $20.7 trillion in economic activity.

Fortunately, on the whole, Mr. Steyer’s campaign to restrict affordable
and reliable energy isn’t getting many converts. Mr. Steyer spent $73.7
million of his own money in a failed effort to make climate change a
major issue in the 2014 elections. He wasted millions of dollars on ads
that often didn’t even address climate change and whose truthfulness was
disputed by fact-checking organizations like Poltifact and
Factcheck.org. After his nearly yearlong campaign, climate change
actually dropped as a priority among voters, ending up near the bottom
of their list of concerns.

Mr. Steyer shouldn’t be entirely surprised if presidential hopefuls
aren’t jumping through his hoops with enthusiasm. In a recent Gallup
poll of the most important problems facing the United States, climate
change was not even listed. The broader “Environment/Pollution” was in
18th place as a concern of just 2 percent of the respondents. The
political reality is that candidates must attract the mainstream
electorate, who prioritize the economy, jobs and poverty — issues that
are in direct conflict with Mr. Steyer’s goals.

Mr. Steyer’s own state of California is ripe with examples of his agenda
clashing with the people’s needs. Due in part to regulations that
require non-hydroelectric renewables to represent 33 percent of the
state’s electricity supply by 2020, residential electricity bills are
nearly 40 percent higher than the national average and the ninth highest
in the nation. Nevertheless, last year, Mr. Steyer testified in favor
of legislation that would have bumped the current 33 percent renewables
target up to 50 percent by 2030.

Mr. Steyer also supports California’s cap-and-trade program, which could
raise gasoline prices by anywhere from 16 cents to 76 cents per gallon.
Meanwhile, he’s pushing a ballot measure that would impose a 10 percent
tax on oil extraction. This tax would, of course, raise gasoline prices
for the state’s motorists, who already pay a 59 cents per gallon gas
tax — one of the nation’s highest and about 11 cents more than the
national average. Even without new taxes, California already has some of
the highest gasoline prices in the country.

Higher energy costs have created a serious problem in California.
According to a report by the Manhattan Institute, one million California
households live in energy poverty, which is defined as a household in
which 10 percent or more of the residents’ income is spent on household
energy costs (excluding gasoline and other transportation-related
costs). Higher energy costs leave these families with less money to
spend on other necessities like groceries or proper healthcare.

Candidates seeking the presidential nomination — particularly in the
Democratic camp — can’t square their rhetoric with their policies. They
claim to help the poor, but they support energy policies that will make
it harder for low-income families to make ends meet. Meanwhile, poll
after poll shows Americans are more concerned about growing the economy
and creating jobs than sacrificing their economic futures at the altar
of Tom Steyer’s climate agenda.

Centuries from now future citizens will pick through the remnants of 21st century Australia. Some discoveries may puzzle them.

Why, for example, did Australians spend so much time and money building
facilities for the purpose of turning salt water into fresh water?

Presumably these future folk will know that Australia didn’t actually
need these devices at the time, given our usual abundant rainfall. So
what was the use of all those desalination plants? Were they merely
experimental? Did they have another, more practical application?

Or, like Stonehenge or Egypt’s pyramids, were they quasi-religious or spiritual monuments to some form of mystical deity?

The last answer will be close enough. Australia’s desalination plants
were built in panic following warnings from former Climate Commission
chief Tim Flannery that we were in danger of running out of water. “In
Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need
desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months,”
Flannery claimed in 2007.

A couple of years ago, at the 2014 Mudgee Readers’ Festival, Flannery
recalled those warnings. “Here in eastern Australia we’ve got much more
variable rainfall, and I remember being asked about this at times, even
by the government. I said, ‘what you should do is build a desalination
plant; that’s really your last resort. Build it as an insurance policy’.

Desalination plants were constructed in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, the
Gold Coast and a couple in Perth, at a total cost of around $12
billion. Most of that money was completely squandered, because — just
like Flannery’s government-funded Climate Council — half of our nation’s
desal plants have since been shut down, or at least reduced to standby
status. Perth’s are still supplying water, and so is Adelaide’s,
although it doesn’t need to following dam-filling rains. As of last
month, the plant is running at just 10 per cent of capacity — at a cost
of $1 million per day.

Sydney’s desal plant hasn’t spat out a drop since it was put on standby
in 2012, only two years after it was opened. It is presently costing
more than half a million dollars per day just to sit there like the
world’s fattest disability pensioner while Sydney’s dams remain at more
than 90 per cent of their capacity. The Gold Coast’s desal plant opened
in 2009 and closed in 2010.

Thanks for all that, Professor Flannery. Undaunted by the outcome of his
ridiculously expensive water worries, the great global warming hysteric
has lately moved on to another field. He’s swapped desal for diesel —
thousands of litres of the stuff.

Recently the Climate Council — a privatised, donation-funded version of
the old Climate Commission, still with Flannery at the helm — invited
concerned Australians to join the professor on a cash-raising cruise
along Western Australia’s Kimberley Coast. “As part of this adventure,
you will join renowned scientist and former Australian of the Year,
Professor Tim Flannery — the Climate Council’s Chief Councillor — on the
adventure of a lifetime,” the Council promises.

“Over eight days you’ll sail the breathtaking Kimberley coast in the
award-winning charter vessel, Kimberley Quest, on an expedition of
archaeological discovery. Best of all, by taking part in this
expedition, you’ll be stepping up to help provide Australians with a
vital source of correct and informed information on climate change.”

There’s no better information than informed information. As part of
their climate crusade, Flannery’s ecotourists will also be supplied with
a “courtesy vehicle to/from your Broome accommodation”, a “light
aircraft from Broome to Mitchell Plateau” and a “return helicopter
flight from Mitchell Plateau to Hunter River”, which is what you’d
expect for a total cost north of $7500.
Lap of luxury and a fuel bill to boot with a scenic flight returning to the Kimberley Quest. Picture: Supplied

All of that fossil fuel incineration doesn’t exactly sit well with
Flannery’s climate change message, however. And then there’s the vessel
he and his mates will travel aboard. The Kimberley Quest II, to give the
ship its full name, is “equipped with a helipad, spa, [and] large
en-suited cabins” that “feature private ensuites, individual
air-conditioning, viewing windows, mini-refrigerators and are serviced
daily by your hostess.”

This sucker’s carbon footprint must be sensational. All of those
airconditioners, spas and fridges don’t run on wind chimes, so the
Kimberley Quest II is fitted with no fewer than four diesel-burning
engines — two massive 450 horsepower Caterpillar 3406Es for propulsion
and a couple of smaller Cat generators to keep the champagne chilled as
you discuss the terrible threat of global warming. Get them all cranking
at once and the diesel consumption rate might be around 320 litres per
hour, which is why this floating Gaia-eater needs a total fuel capacity
of 36,000 litres.

To put that fuel capacity into perspective, 36,000 litres of diesel is
enough to run a poor African village’s electricity generator for nearly
five years. The fastest Audi at last year’s Le Mans 24 hour race made it
all the way to the podium after using less than 1500 litres of diesel
during the entire event.

Still, I suppose Flannery’s diesel drainage is all worth it. You can
never put a price on the “correct and informed information on climate
change.” Unless that price is more than $7500 per customer, not
including return flights to Broome, personal expenditures for laundry
and tipping, compulsory travel insurance and meals not outlined in the
itinerary

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl
Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the
unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If
sugar is bad we are all dead

Global warming has now become a worldwide political gravy-train -- so
only a new ice-age could stop it. I am happy however to be one of the
small band who keep the flame of truth alive

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That
the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however
disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the
environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded: At any
given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about
100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much
seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in
average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless
altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not
because of the facts

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are
just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in
their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think
it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was
addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that
they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those
days

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock
Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They
obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century.
Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses,
believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic
church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of
Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile,
mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by
non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This
contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel"
produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture
in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one
carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is
common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic
theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil),
which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes
and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to
exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil
layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the
only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great
expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far)
precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element
of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique
versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all,
in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the
atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all
other living things."

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the
atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores
is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient
account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of
280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of
compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. Perhaps the gas
content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr
Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core
measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30
years.

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by
experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you
believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians,
nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers".
It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an"
could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed
holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household
items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays",
"might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global
cooling

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has
been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd;
indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a
widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest"
which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself."
He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance
on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern
medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to
acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of
duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is
nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run
the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics
are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of
the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development
of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in
climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale
appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and
suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their
ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective.
They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of
global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized
civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that
about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe
disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of
someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide
any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right
that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to
them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with
fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my
research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much
writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in
detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that
field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because
no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped
that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I
have shifted my attention to health related science and climate
related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic.
Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC
blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental
research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers
published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of
reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have
put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some
of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter.
Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular
bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only
because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is
reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global
warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It
seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in
global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics
or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future.
Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities
in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism
is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known
regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are
on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the
science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let
alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world.
Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a
scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to
be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be
none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions.
Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would
disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific
statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a
psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to
be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous
pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation
of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that
suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old
guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be
unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with
tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can
afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society
today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were.
But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that
seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count
(we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader
base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an
enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out
of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict
conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy
sources, like solar power.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the
totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the
black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current
manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the
weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate
50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met
Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The
Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because
they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their
global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is
like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here)
that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative
donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they
agree with

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the
Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a
pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we
worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that
clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down
when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years
poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that
might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid
their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback
that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2
and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence
gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years
show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2
will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to
bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to
increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the
plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its
carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It
admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast
filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of
the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather
improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the
universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for
making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all
logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level
rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the
average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting
point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the
Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which
NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees.
So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And
the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not
raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of
Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the
water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated
it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with
that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The
whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening
of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen:
"We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of
decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very
partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw
data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that
it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones'
Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate
data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make
the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something
wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given
conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive
such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real
environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more
motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity
that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence
showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of
the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty
and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of
the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to
admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the
date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been
clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that
saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of
society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that
fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called
phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming
is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the
hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so
Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people
want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing
all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the
real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better
than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all
Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a
Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global
Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie
panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a
new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the
threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit
the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The
real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another
life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The
most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by
Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the
unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when
the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in
1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out.
Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually
better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that
we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism
is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note
also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably
well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming
denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it.
That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses
believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say
that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed --
and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when
people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as
too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy.
Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common
hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact
that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few
additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a
hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we
breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical
to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad
enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180)
must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not
to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the
ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research
grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of
money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some
belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of
"The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked
event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist
instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without
material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such
people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example.
Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that
instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious
committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them
to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them
to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and
folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES
beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any
known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough
developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil
fuel theory

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this,
that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light;
preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts
shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that
his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes
to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the
earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise
reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so
small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally
without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a
time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures
tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th
century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because
they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely.
But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern
hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the
world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is
claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since
seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to
even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility.
Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the
atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the
oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No
comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base
balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational
basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units
has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air
movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an
unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate
experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables
over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years
hence. Give us all a break!

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This
crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I
am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils,
namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by
an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In
such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and
are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts
production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to
be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to
every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper
was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film.
It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account
fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is
nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a
Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven
climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of
the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the
paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in
recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie
mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that
reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented
July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even
have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact
that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving
into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got
the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:"The
modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by
Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the
number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an
acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correla­tion coefficient
between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was
doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green,
Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished
the alleged connection between economic condi­tions and lynchings in
Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal­ysis in
1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and
economic condi­tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The
correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."
So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the
Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature
rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if
measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been
considered.

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar
cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal
electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic
to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the
article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename
the following: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20121106-1520/jonjayray.comuv.com/